Death Blog

Just a heads-up that I have decided to let this blog go.

You know, when I decided to set this blog up I had these ideas that I would write critiques of the films and theater that I saw, and maybe funny little anecdotes about my observations about the world around me, perhaps even enlightening pieces about my journey down my spiritual path. But honestly, I really didn’t have a concept in mind. I had no theme, or any idea of who my audience would be.

I actually thought it would be fun to write about my family ala David Sedaris, but the only safe way to do that would be to do it incognito. I mean, if I wanted to say something controversial I wanted to be able to do it without the subject reading it and getting all freaked out about it. And since my web address is my name my site is not exactly anonymous.

The only thing that I ever posted that had any worth was my journal of my China trip that I made available to all my traveling companions. Most of them read it and enjoyed it and thanked me for my diligent recording of all our memories.

But really, most of the time I don’t feel inspired to write anything, and often, I start to write a piece, and then I never finish it and it never gets posted and I discover it months later in some Miscellaneous Writings folder.

And frankly, I didn’t post anything for over a year! That’s unforgivable!

It was a nice idea maybe, but now it’s a waste of my and your time, and a lead balloon hanging around my neck that I’m sick of thinking about, and doing nothing about.

And frankly, no one really reads it anyway, and why should they? I didn’t post anything for over a year!

It’s time to let it go. I’m obviously not blogger material. I just don’t care about it.

I’m going to delete my blogger account on Thursday July 2nd.

At that time my account of erichschoessler.com will revert to whatever form it was in before I connected it to my blogger account. What it will be is a mystery even to me. I seem to remember an Under Construction page.

Hmmm….Under Construction. that’s a lie as well. I honestly don’t need a web page any more than I needed a blog page.

Waaa, Waaaa, Waaaa.

News Flash! California Supreme Court Upholds right to minority discrimination by popular vote!

In a precedent setting decision the California Supreme Court has upheld proposition 8, which removes the right to marriage for same sex couples. The proposition, which was passed by California’s voters, amended the state constitution by adding the definition of marriage as being only between a man and a woman.

This thrilling turn of events opens up an exciting world of possibilities for California’s bigots who now can attempt to impose legal discrimination against anyone they choose merely by putting all manner of constitutional amendments before the voting public.

The range of constitutional amendments boggles the mind. We could take care of illegal immigration by defining “people” in the state constitution as Caucasians only. Or we could define the right to vote as excluding Republicans, the right to drive a vehicle as excluding Asians, or the right to bear arms as applying to everyone except NRA members.

If we start now we can get some of these propositions in place for the 2010 election.

Who needs the legislature when you have the will of the people?

Hell, if we had this opportunity in the late 19th century to leave civil rights up to the voting public, we’d probably still have slavery!

Another Carnival Cruise - How Lucky Can I Be?

May 13, 2009

Last weekend my partner and I took a 3 day Carnival Cruise.

But, let me backtrack a little. Last June my partner and I, against our better judgment, took a 12 day Carnival cruise in the Mediterranean on the Carnival Freedom out of Civitavecchia. It was a great itinerary, the main attraction being its call to Naples, which allowed us to do a shore excursion to the ruins at Pompeii, which my partner has always wanted to see.

This Carnival Freedom monstrosity holds 3200 passengers, which is about 1500 more passengers than I care to be around. I mean, that is like a flippin’ floating city. That’s crazy stuff. And we were extremely wary of doing Carnival, being committed Holland America cruisers. Too me, Carnival was beer drinking and wet tee-shirt contests.

The interior of the Carnival Freedom was unbelievably hideous, but to give them credit, the crowd control was handled beautifully, I never had the sense of being trapped with 3200 other people either at meals, debarking the ship or on shore excursions. And the food, though not always varied, was always good.

I just hate the Carnival interiors, with that one long, noisy promenade pulsating with nightclub after nightclub and multiple photography facades with staff photographers trying to con you in to do portraits. I hate those awful pin-point light panels showing the names of public rooms so you know you’re heading in the right direction. It just looks so tacky.

And the kids. On our Europe cruise there were 800 children on board. They roamed the ship in packs like little street gangs. It was really unnerving to be waiting for an elevator and have the door open and out comes this mob of kids, yelling and screaming and leaping about. If we had been on a street we would have been so rolled.

I always love to use the spa facilities but you couldn’t get near the hot tubs, they were apparently reserved for the pre-teens who always inhabited them all day, all night, hip to hip.

Anyway, even though I had a good time I told my partner, no more Carnival. We’ve done it. We’ve had the experience. That’s enough.

We live in San Diego and Carnival runs two ships to Mexico out of San Diego each week, the Spirit and the Elation. My partner (again) has always wanted to go to Catalina which the Elation stops at. He has suggested on several occasions that we jump on the Elation to try it and my response is just to mumble something unintelligible and hope that this evil idea just goes away.

See, let me explain something. First off, even though I may often behave like a drunken adolescent I am actually not one. I quit drinking alcohol years ago and despite an occasional sip of wine I don’t drink and don’t enjoy being around people who are drunk. And on Carnival passengers are so attached to their alcohol that they wander the ship holding bottles of beer and cocktail glasses of mixed drinks. Secondly, I worked for 15 years for Holland America Line at their corporate office in Seattle and cruised on many Holland America itineraries and am much more in tune with their more sedate cruising experience. I never saw passengers on Holland America traipse about the ship with drinks in hand. So, I would actually rather have my molars drilled than to go on another Carnival cruise.

Since the Mexican Flu (Oh my gawd, did I say that out loud? I thought I only thought it.) I mean the Swine flu, oh damn, wait a minute, the H1N1 flu virus, all the cruise ships doing Mexico decided to not call at any Mexican ports for the next few months. Which is kind of ridiculous since there have been no flu cases in the Baja, and at this point there are more American flu cases than Mexican.

But, be that as it may, the ships are all cancelling their Mexico ports of call and many are substituting San Diego. This of course makes no sense for ships that are embarking/debarking in San Diego. But the Elation is substituting a day at sea for their call in Ensenada. So their 3 day itinerary is Catalina and a day at sea. And on top of that, they have a California promo going where you can get on for $99 a person.

My partner was sold. Our chance to see Catalina. I could board the ship after I got off work Thursday, I’d only have to take Friday off, and we would disembark Sunday with enough time for me to make it to church even.

He offered to pay. I could hardly refuse. I could stand it for 3 days. Right?

First off, it’s a 3 day cruise. Let’s face the facts. The shorter the cruise, the cheaper the fare, the gamier the clientele. And on top of this one, it’s only $99! Hell, anyone can put $99 on your credit card and not have too much to worry about.

My partner has been berating me for referring to our cruise experience as Pacific Beach on the 4th of July. (For those of you outside of San Diego the 4th of July crowd on Pacific Beach was so drunk and rowdy last year that they rioted. Riot squad had to be called in to disperse the out of control boys in their board shorts and backwards baseball caps). Seriously, I’m so glad I was not on Pacific Beach last year on the 4th of July.

We boarded the ship minutes before the Elation left port and I remarked to my partner how drunk everyone was and he reminded me that embarkation had started at 11:00 am that morning so most of the passengers had been drinking for hours. Two guys holding big orange plastic Carnival glasses with umbrella’s shouted at us at the elevators. We looked out our verandah (this verandah was so tiny that you had to turn the chairs sideways to sit in them) and watched four young people, holding each other up, stumbling across the deck. I can stand this for 3 days, I kept telling myself, I can stand this for 3 days.

It was indeed survivable for 3 days. When I got too overwhelmed I just went back to the cabin and hid. The din from the bar at the bottom of the atrium was so loud you could hear it all over the ship. As the last tenders returned from a day at Catalina you could hear the drunks on board yelling and screaming and laughing as they pulled up alongside the ship. On our sea day the ship had security stationed all along the pool deck, obviously to be able to react swiftly to a PB July 4th type riot. Thankfully no one rioted, although I did see someone hurl a hamburger paddy complete with cheese across the deck. It sat there for about a half hour before someone bent down and picked it up. I was disappointed that no one stepped in it, fell and broke their leg, triggering a PB type beach riot.

Let me say though, on the ship’s behalf, that our cabin steward was a doll named Ida, and the dining room staff were always wonderful to deal with. And the big lounge shows were the best I’ve ever seen on any cruise ship. (Holland America’s always stunk.) The performers were mature and I’ve never seen such energy.

However, If my partner ever tries to get me on another Carnival cruise….

October 22, 2007 – Shanghai – and home

We were going to be transported to a different airport for our departure back to the states , a newer airport than we arrived in from YiChang.

Alex gave us a little pep talk on our ride to the airport about China. He told us that he appreciated people coming to see his country, since so many westerners have an antiquated view of what modern China is all about. I know I certainly did. He told us he has traveled all over the world, all through Asia, the UK, Australia but has never been to the states, because of the difficulty in obtaining an American visa from his government.

But, just an an example of how people can be misinformed, he said that based on what he was shown from the media, that he thought if he ever went to the U.S. that he would be shot by a firearm within 5 minutes of his arrival. On the other side he said that his grandmother who is 90 years has never seen a fortune cookie.

Alex pointed out that this airport had a MagLev high speed train that we might see whiz by that traveled from the airport to Shanghai in 7 minutes. He told us if we saw the train at all, it would go by too fast to take a picture of. We actually saw it fly by twice and it was indeed fast.

We left Shanghai at 1:30pm and we arrived in San Francisco 11 hours later at 7:30 am the same day. For some reason the flight didn’t seem nearly as interminable as the flight to Beijing. It was only shorter by one hour. Michael had 2 bottles of vodka that he had bought at duty free in Shanghai. When we arrived in San Franciso we had to reclaim our luggage and go through customs and immigration. Little did we know we would have to go through security again and they would not allow the liquor through security. He was informed that he could either abandon it or leave security and go back to the check-in counter and try to check it. As the security guard walked him out of security she said that he should have been told that there was another security check so he could have had an opportunity to pack the liquor in his checked baggage before he relinquished it again.
At the counter they wouldn’t allow it to be checked in the little soft bag that he had the bottles in. All he could do was abandon 2 good bottles of vodka. It was a tragedy. Absolutely maddening! And he was furious. So let that be a lesson to you.

When we arrived at the gate for our flight back to San Diego everyone was talking about the fact that there had been wildfires raging in the North and East San Diego county now since Sunday. Many neighborhoods had apparently been evacuated. What a mess to return to, and we had no idea where the fires were headed and what neighborhoods were most effected. Our flight was showing as delayed and we wondered if the San Diego airport might be closed due to the smoke. We lived through Southern California wildfires in 2003 and the smoke and air problem is terrible. All we could do is wait and see.

Sunday October 21st – Shanghai

I think that Shanghai is my favorite city so far. It seems so cosmopolitan. I love all the big buildings and neon. When you drive around at night all the buildings flash and sparkle with neon lightshows. When we drive by the stadium there is a huge screen showing clips from past performances. Our guide Alex seems incredibly hip. He speaks English with a British accent and is always dressed in very trendy clothes, from his two toned glasses to his hip shoes. Alex told us that guiding Japanese tourists was like herding sheep, but guiding American tourists was like herding cats. I loved the imagery and we knew exactly what he meant. At any given time we always seemed to be all over the place.

As usual we had breakfast in the hotel. At 9:00 am we met Alex and our driver Chau and headed out of town to visit a water village, SzuJiaJiao. This time we were really outside the city in the country. Everyone was fascinated by these water towers that we saw that actually expanded as they filled with water.

We were out in rural Shanghai. We kept passing what resembled Condominium developments. Alex said that farmers lived there. He told us that the farmers here were doing well financially and were able to purchase such nice digs. I couldn’t imagine it. I thought farmers were supposed to live in farm houses. But surrounding these buildings were fields and wetlands.

The bus took the turn into SzuJiaJiao and we were back in the land of a million buses and thousands of tourists. Apparently there are several water villages surrounding Shanghai, Alex chose this one because it was far less crowded on a Sunday than Suzhou, which is the most well known, and which I thought we would be visiting. I couldn’t have been too disappointed, SzuJiaJiao proved to be a delight.

We assembled in front of the KFC and took a few moments for folks to use the public toilet (into the KFC and up 2 flights of stairs). I abstained. I was leery now of public facilities in China.

The town was indeed like a little Chinese Venice. It was an actual functioning town with actual residents attempting to go about their daily business. We were advised to respect this and not be taking pictures of people trying to do what families do during the day. We wandered through the narrow streets and checked out the shopkeepers stuff. It was sunny and warm. There were canals everywhere and bridges crossing the canals, and everyone took everyone else’s pictures posing luxuriously on the bridges.

We toured the herbal doctor’s shop which was kept just as it had been a hundred years ago. We visited the old post office which had a nice display of the history of the Chinese mail service. Li bought several discs by this guy who was standing at a kiosk playing this flute type instrument that looked like it was made out of some vegetable. I remarked that the tune was very beautiful, so Li bought a few and gave me one, which was very sweet of her. (When we got the discs home we discovered that they were actually DVDs, with music videos of this guy happily playing his rutabaga flute amidst very Thai looking locals. Maybe he’s Dai?)

The climax of our visit was a gondola ride through the canals. They really weren’t gondolas but small boats operated by oars that resembled gondolas. It was a lovely trip through the canals and under the bridges, corny but really relaxing and fun.

As we trooped out of town and over the last bridge we had an opportunity to purchase a fish in a plastic bag and dump it into the water from the top of the bridge as some sort of good luck gesture. None of us did it. We were told that the farmers who sold the fish would go downstream and catch the same fish so they could bag them and sell them again. Actually, I suppose they were only really renting the fish, since you weren’t actually keeping them.

We went back into the city and had lunch. Miraculously we were just around the corner from our next craft event, Silk Carpets. We were taken up this enormous freight elevator into a room filled with looms and women making silk carpets by hand. I always had the impression at these places that the people you saw actually in the process of producing whatever craft we were looking at, were placed at this spot for entertainment purposes only, and the bulk of the production occurred elsewhere. But even though there were only 2 or 3 people actually working there were looms all over the warehouse floor with obvious carpets in the process of being created, abandoned for now.

We learned that there were 2 kinds of silk carpet, silk on cotton and silk on silk. The “on” part referred to the backing or warp that runs the length of the rug that the silk was woven and tied through from side to side. This warp of silk or cotton would be stretched taut on the loom from top to bottom and the weaver would be tying the different colors of silk in knots through the warp . The intricacy of the rug depended on how many knots each row had. The guide told us but I can’t remember now not having a mind for numbers. The women learning this craft would be trained for a year before they actually started producing a rug. And often if the rug were really detailed that might be the only one that they ever work on. The weavers worked from off of these blueprints that hung from the warp above where they were working. I couldn’t make heads or tails out of them but they apparently made perfect sense to them because they worked quickly. Off to one side was a guy who was applying sculpture to a silk rug with a pair of electric scissors by literally chopping the rug, following it’s design. It never occurred to me that someone might have to do that by hand. I always thought it was stamped in by some giant machine.

We were then led into another room where, oh my gosh, could it be true! Yes! They were selling rugs! What a surprise! The guide first gave us a hands-on demonstration of these incredible hand-made rugs. It was miraculous how, depending which end you were looking at the rug’s color changed dramatically. It would either be rich and deep colored, or turn the rug around and the light would make it a much lighter color. It’s all in the nap. She distributed small versions of the silk on silk rugs and they were a wonder to the touch. Most of these were not for treading on, but were so exquisite that they were for hanging on the wall, like artwork.

As soon as we started to wander around and examine the product a salesman latched onto us, as they always do at these places, they don’t know the concept of letting people browse. Michael and I started to admire a beautiful black and red Chinese rug hanging on the wall. It was 8 by 5 and was a silk on cotton and had characters, people and animals around the periphery of the rug that represented something or other from Xi’an. This guys was so desperate to make this sale. At first I didn’t think that Michael was really interested in a not inexpensive rug but he kept looking at it. I told Michael that first off it was a lot of money, that the cats would love clawing at it like they do with all our floor rugs. Then the guy brought down the price. Then he offered to remove the shipping cost if he could fold it up into a tiny square and let us carry it on the plane home. (“Are you crazy?” I whispered to Michael, “We’ve got enough carry-ons as it is.”)

I had to walk away. I can’t stand to witness such desperation. Well finally the guy said he checked with his manager and gave Michael a price that couldn’t be beat. It was like dealing with a used car salesman. But Michael took it. Wrote his name on the back, gave them our address and his credit card and we had a new Chinese, silk on cotton rug being shipped to San Diego, as a souvenir of our trip to China.

I was surprised that more people in our shopping frenzy group didn’t buy rugs, but I only saw 1 other purchase of 2 hallway sized rugs by our group.

We were given an option as to how people wanted to orchestrate the remainder of our last evening in Shanghai. We would go back to the hotel, give people 30 minutes to freshen up and those that wanted to could go to Nanjing Road for shopping or stay in the hotel until dinner. The bus would then return and pick them up and we would all go to dinner. Michael and I stayed with the group but popped into our room for a few minutes to regroup.

When the bus got into site of Nanjing Road the entire bus gasped. I’m not sure if Nanjing Road is always a pedestrian-only street but on this Sunday evening I have never seen such a crowd in my life. We were instructed to meet Alex back at the Haagen Dazs in 1 hour. Michael and I wandered all the way to the end of the street and back again. I don’t know if it was my blonde hair but we were approached constantly by black market vendors, I could spot them heading towards us. Our walk was nothing but me constantly telling people “No” as they tried to push fold out picture catalogs of their black market knock-offs in our faces. I couldn’t figure out what these picture cards they were shoving at us. I remember I saw them at the Yuan Garden Market as well. Are they trying to get us to order out of a catalog? It was annoying, I got hit 4 times per block.

But the streets were packed, again on a Sunday just like our street visit to Xi’an. It was incredible. There were thousands of people here. And there was every kind of store and outlet imaginable. And as twilight came the neon lights came on. There was a square on one side of the street with a giant television monitor that played all the logos for all the cities that have ever hosted the Olympic games just so they could show “Beijing 2008” over and over again. We sat and enjoyed the sites and when it was time we wandered across the street and joined everyone who were eating ice cream from Haagen Dazs.

Now about the black market vendors; one of the women in our group, Terry, wanted to buy her daughter a purse. Li was with her and about 4 other women. They were approached by a vendor and Li explained that they were interested in a purse. The vendor then took them down a side-street and into a store front, into the back and they literally pushed a secret door in the back which led them down a hallway through several more doors and finally into a room where all the knock-offs were kept. The women said it was a little nerve wracking. I told them they were lucky they weren’t murdered and robbed. But they all ended up buying nice looking stuff and Terry got her daughter a swell purse.

The neon and lights had all come on down Nanjing Road, it was still packed and very festive. Alex led us back to the bus and we swung by the hotel and picked up the stragglers that stayed back and we went and had dinner. I wondered where they found these places where we had our meals. There was nothing wrong with them they just seemed all over the place and some in odd locations. Our last night in Shanghai we ate in the 2nd floor restaurant of this out of the way hotel. As usual we were put out of the way in a banquet room at two tables and then the waitresses just started bringing out large platters of food, mostly pork but we’d also get chicken, beef, vegetables, egg plant, one restaurant served us calamari, the only time we saw seafood besides fish on the trip. We always knew the meal was nearing it’s end when we got a noodle dish followed by a soup course. Then it was the Chinese National Fruit, watermelon. We always got a platter of watermelon at the end.

We then had one last treat. Alex had Chau drive us along The Bund in the dark so we could see the lights and it was wonderful. The colonial banking buildings were all lit up in spotlights, but the skyscrapers across the Pudong were all lit up, and one tall, flat, curved building had animated film running across it. We all tried to get pictures out of the bus window as our driver made several passes then got back on the freeway to take us back to our hotel.

The next morning we would have breakfast and then head out to the airport for our flight home. So it would be packing this evening at the hotel.

Saturday October 20th – Shanghai

We had breakfast in the lobby of the Jian Guo. It was a lovely breakfast buffet. Michael was so thrilled we discovered Dim-Sum items and he found his favorite, Turnip cake which he had the omelet guy grill for him.

While we were eating Li showed up. We missed her terribly. And even though Mr. Wu came through as our cheerleader in her absence it wasn’t the same without her. Though it was nasty of her to abandon us to The Three Kingdoms. She and Marilyn flew to Shanghai without a hitch and it took them 2 days of running around to get the Passport reissued and the Chinese Visa reissued. Now Marilyn could actually rejoin the group and get out of the country. But it sure made the rest of us hold onto our passports with a tighter grip.

Our first stop was The Bund, the large embankment along the Huangpu river, whose photos serve as the most common view of Shanghai. I was very excited to go here, to see all the Western style buildings along this previous financial center of the city. These buildings were the colonial banks and trading houses of Britain, France, the U.S., Russia, Germany, Japan, The Netherlands and Belgium, as well as the consulates of Russia and Britain, a newspaper, the Shanghai Club and the Masonic Club. All built in the late 1800’s and early 19. I also can’t forget those shots of the Japanese marching into Shanghai along the Bund from the movie Empire of the Sun. Our guide Alex told us that the Bund is actually a Portugese word that means “embankment”.

Being a Saturday the Bund was packed, with tourists, locals and vendors. I got so annoyed at the vendors that wouldn’t leave us alone that I yelled at one and Michael said “Now, be nice.” I have a low tolerance for that sort of thing and I had just had it. To add to my annoyance this one in particular was selling those junky “Rolex” watches. They had nothing to do with Rolex, they were just junk that wouldn’t run after a day if they lasted that long.

What we kept seeing the vendors selling along the Bund were these blobs of sticky rubber with ears that I guess was supposed to be some sort of animal like a pig. And when the vendor hurled them to the ground with force, they would flatten out like rubber vomit, and then slowly pop back up into shape again. I figured that would be for the locals to buy for their kids. It looked disgusting to me. Michael took a picture of one. Later one of the people in our group showed up with a bag of them. “Stocking stuffers,” she said.

We walked along the Bund with the crowds. Across the river the Pudong, which used to be just rice fields, was now covered with the most modern looking, outrageous skyscrapers, most enormous hotels, looking like spaceships about to take off.

As usual, the immensity of the crowds here was spectacular in itself. We spent an hour just wandering up and down the walkway with the locals.

We then visited the Shanghai museum. Finally a museum! I was so excited! I love museums. This was a beautiful building right downtown abutting The People’s Square behind it. The Museum was divided into four floors. We were advised to start at the top and work our way down. Each floor was separated into separate arts and crafts; Ancient Bronze, Ancient Ceramics, Paintings, Calligraphy, Ancient Sculpture, Ancient Jade, Coins, Ming and Qing Furniture, Seals, and Minority Nationalities. Our guide turned us on to this bit of important historical trivia; the reason that old Chinese coins were round with square holes in the middle was that the Ancient Chinese believed that the Heaven was round and the earth was square. I heard someone in the coin gallery ask that same question and I was able to insert myself into their private conversation and give them the answer, though honestly, I don’t think they believed me. It was a wonderful museum although with the time allotted we had to race through a few of the galleries. We had some time left so we went outside to the Peoples Square and sat in the sun. The sun was actually out and shining on us.

We were informed that we would be having lunch at a minority restaurant. The population of China is 93% Han people. The other percent comprises 55 other Chinese ethnic minorities. When we were on the Shandong stream boat trip a guide on our boat described herself as a minority but I couldn’t catch which ethnic group. This restaurant was, according to our guide, a Dai restaurant. I, honestly, didn’t think the food was any different than any other Chinese food we were served on our trip. The façade of the restaurant and the interior looked Thai if anything with its brightly colored fabrics and elephant motifs. My China book said that the Dai actually associate themselves very closely with the Thai. So maybe Dai/Thai is a connection? Usually when we ate somewhere we were seated in banquet rooms away from the rest of the diners sitting in the main dining room of the restaurant. In this place we could hear music being performed but never could tell by who or what since we couldn’t see what was happening. It was very loud, we were probably fortunate not to have it blaring in our ears while we were eating.

After lunch we were taken to a silk factory. Now again, I was suspicious of another shopping excursion but was pleasantly surprised at the informative demonstration about how silk is produced. They showed us the silk worms and their cocoons. We saw how the individual cocoons were steamed to kill the worms inside and then the cocoons were stirred in water with a hard bristle brush to catch the end of the thread and once identified we watched as it was wound onto spools on this long machine off of each individual cocoon.

The cocoons with 2 worms inside could not be made into thread so these were stretched to make stuffing for comforters. It was amazing watching these women use their strength to stretch these cocoons to the size of a double bed.

And of course there was a silk store! Bedding, comforters, bolts of silk fabric, clothing, shirts, dresses, skirts, purses. Michael and I broke down and both purchased a silk shirt. Mine was cream colored with embossed Chinese dragons. Michael’s was burgundy. And I bought silk coin purses as souvenirs for folks back home.

YuYuan Gardens is where we were headed next. The story of this place is that a man (Ming Dynasty) built this massive garden in the middle of Shanghai for his parents so they’d have a garden to walk in, but they died before it was finished. It was more a series of structures and walkways than a garden in the traditional Western sense, although there were large trees overhanging the whole place. The structures were all very Chinese in style in white and black. The tortured rocks we had seen before in the Forbidden City were here again, and placed all around one of the temple-like structures giving it the sense that it was floating in the clouds.

YuYuan Gardens was packed with people. The walkways through the gardens were so narrow that you were literally walking in a line. I refused to take any pictures because I would be basically taking pictures of mobs of people. It was like a bad day at Disneyland. It was very interesting and I’m glad I saw it but it was way too crowded. One of the worst tourist mobbed sites we’d seen so far.

The Gardens were situated next to a huge, open air shopping arcade known as Yu Gardens Bazaar, a modern plaza designed in an old fashioned style out of shiny, red wood. It was really pretty and really crowded. Our group was set loose to shop and were to meet in 1 hour at the Starbucks next to the square. There was every kind of shop you could imagine up and down the walkways, from tourist junk to jade, but it was too crowded for us and nothing there we were interested in buying so Michael and I went into Starbucks early because I needed some caffeine. We found our guide, Alex in there taking a breather. The place was really crowded. As soon as I saw a table vacated I sent Michael over to take the seat while I waited for my capucchino.

Once it was time to group again we went outside. As we stood there and more and more of us wandered over we noticed that those black-market vendors were starting to group around us and we told everyone to hold onto their purses, it was very suspicious. Finally everyone was there and we were completely surrounded by these creepy peddlars. Michael and I kept our backs to them to keep them away from the women and they were getting close, trying to pass their flyers into the women, sticking their hands into the group. At one point I pushed one guy’s arm away and said “No!” It was getting really freaky, we were surrounded by these people. Finally our guide said “Let’s go!” and we broke out and trotted after him, but we all remarked afterwards how stressful and weird that was. (And yes, these street black market vendors in Shanghai didn’t just carry their wares to show you, they had these flyers that unfolded with pictures on them of their stock. I couldn’t imagine what the next step was if you were actually interested, but more on that later.)

Some of the people in our group decided that the day had been exhausting enough and decided to opt out of dinner. Alex and our driver took us to a Mongolian Grill which was great fun. We chose our raw food and they cooked it for us on the grill and then we took either noodles or rice from the buffet and dumped our grill on top and went for it.

We were all pretty tired. Then it was back to the Jian Guo for the night. But neither Michael and I were sleepy so we decide to take a walk down the street. It was Saturday night and there were people everywhere I decided I wanted an ice cream cone. So when we spied a Haagen Dazs I went for it. When we walked in it looked like any other Haagen Dazs with the ice cream counter and all the barrels of ice cream on display through the glass and named in English. But this one had a sitting area off to one side. Not just tables and chairs to snack on your cone or sundae, but more like a formal, table service area. We were greeted when we came in by a hostess who was standing at the door, who seemed to want to seat us at a table, but all I wanted to do was pick a flavor and get a cone. I pointed at the ice cream and kept walking to the counter. She watched me quizzically. There were prices in English. A cone with a single scoop was 28 Yuan. But Michael seemed to think we were doing something awful by not being allowed to be seated. “But all I want is a cone,” I said, “I don’t want to sit at a table.” The people behind the counter looked at us like we had eight heads. OK, we let them seat us at a table. As long as I could get a flippin’ cone. So the hostess seated us and I looked at the menu. It was all big things like fancy sundaes and other big ice cream desserts. “No, “ I said, closing the menu, “I just want a cone and walk out with it. I don’t want to sit inside and eat it.”

“Maybe people don’t do that here,” Michael said.

Yes they do, I told him, I’d seen people walking down the street with cones. They were white people like us. He was right, I hadn’t seen any Chinese walking down the street eating ice cream cones; chicken feet and other indescribable items roasted on sticks, yes, but ice cream cones no.

We got up from the table and Michael managed to communicate to the hostess that I wanted a cone and I pointed at the flavor I wanted. Even thought the flavors were listed in English no one could speak any English.

They gave me my cone, overcharged me for it and I left, happy. It was so sweet, I was rapturous.

Then we returned to the hotel and bed.

Friday October 19th – Yangtze – YiChang - Shanghai

I’m not sure how long it actually took The Three Kingdoms to traverse the 5 locks, or how long thoughout the night the boat just sat waiting for daybreak but I kept waking up to ship horns blowing right outside my window. Michael said he didn’t hear a thing but another member of our group was able to confirm that the horns kept her awake as well.

We had breakfast and then met downstairs to take our last shore excursion, the tour of the Three Gorges Dam Project, the biggest dam project in the world. The second floor of the boat had an atrium open to the Front office below and whenever we had a shore excursion we were separated up into manageable groups with guides and our groups were designated by sheets of paper scotch taped to the edge of the atrium so they hung down with group names/cabin numbers hand printed on them. So then you were supposed to identify your name/number and hang out under your sign. The lobby was always a mess of people.

I’m sure it’s because of dealing with population density for millennia, but the Chinese don’t seem to care about crowd control or waiting you turn or any kind of order. We witnessed it repeatedly as we’d be patiently standing in line, groups of Chinese would just walk up and push their way in, without any sense of embarrassment. At the Summer Palace a group did this at the line to the dragon boat on the lake and I thought there was going to be a fist-fight when another Chinese began shouting at them. And when we were getting off the boat for one of our shore excursions a group of Chinese attempted to force their way off ahead of us. We had to physically push to keep our group together.

Anyway, we boarded our tour bus with our guide Michael and we headed towards the dam. We were first taken to a security checkpoint where we had to all get off the bus and were herded through a metal detector. It was the strangest thing. First off there was no one keeping track to make sure that everyone got off the bus. Secondly, the metal detector didn’t really seem to be doing anything. Thirdly there was no one to make sure that you had brought all your carry-ons off of the bus. Once through this cursory check we all got back on the bus and continued on our way up the hill to the dam lookout.

The dam was very large. It was interesting to be able to see the locks that we had traveled through from a distance. Our guide Michael basically told us nothing about the dam. He was kind of useless. We got off at the visitors center which was crawling with tourists. There was a huge mock-up of the dam and surrounding territories and a voice on recording was giving you pertinent facts about the project. It was so crowded I just wandered about the center which was also filled with stuff for you to buy and then Michael and I went outside and took pictures from the lookout.

I was disappointed. When I saw “Tour of the Dam”, I assumed that we’d get to go inside and see giant turbines and stuff. But it actually meant, “look from a distance.” Oh well. That’s ok I guess.

We went back to the boat and we left the dam and continued our voyage. The sun was out and it was really pretty for our first time on the river. I actually thought we were going to be disembarking somewhere around the dam. I thought that the dam was the end of our voyage. But suddenly we were sailing again, in the sun and warmth, and past some of the most spectacular scenery we’d seen. We actually sailed for another half a day. Mr. Wu told me that all of this was part of the 3rd Gorge, and it was lovely.

We had been instructed to pack our luggage and put it outside our cabin door. So boat porters had already taken our bags somewhere but we all kept use of our cabins so we had somewhere to use the bathroom as we relaxed in the sun top deck.

Finally we pulled into YiChang, which was nothing more than a pier and a hill. We did a U turn in the middle of the river and waited for another dirty vessel to leave the pier and we pulled up. All of us went downstairs awaiting our turn to disembark, amidst piles of luggage.

Once we were tied up alongside the doors opened and men carrying sticks and rope came on board and much to our amazement began carrying the luggage off in the old fashioned method of having 2 or 3 pieces of luggage hanging on ropes on each end of their stick and carrying this pole across their shoulders, these skinny little guys lugged these things off of the boat. Everyone was so flabbergasted they were snapping pictures like crazy. I couldn’t imagine the pressure of the pole on your upper back. Some of these suitcases were big cases and these guys were piling on 2 or 3 on each side.

We would spend part of our day in YiChang having lunch and whatever and would wind our way to the airport for our flight to Shanghai. We had a guide for the day as usual who was the local YiChang expert and our bus wound its way through a tree lined road and finally into the city. YiChang has a population of over 3 million. I’m getting the impression that if you’re a city and you’re in China you’re going to have a population in the millions. The weather was still sunny and warm. There appeared to be a lot of construction going on in parts of the city. All of the major institutions in the city had “Three Gorges” as part of their name, as our guide pointed out that the Three Gorges was their major tourist draw in existing. Fresh fish was also a big deal to them here.

We had lunch at a local hotel. And as predicted, it included the local fish which was quite delicious.

Then we stopped at a place selling silk embroidery pictures for yet another shopping event. Michael and I were not interesting in this so we strolled about the neighborhood which was primarily automobile parts, particularly clutch covers. Though we did stumble upon an apartment building with a lovely Victory Garden type vegetable garden. We also saw the area’s forestry department building.

We continued on for a short stop at a local farm. Many of the group stayed on the bus. The rest of us were herded into a small, rather claustrophobic house largely built of big home-made bricks where an elderly man and his wife welcomed us in. It was incredibly clean and neat which made it feel more like a museum than an actual living space. There were several farm implements posed about and the guide began talking about the family as they demonstrated. It was a little too close for me and I felt really weird about being there so I wandered out and Michael followed me and we just strolled around the area. We later found out from the group that did stay and listen to the guide that the family actually didn’t live in the shack we were being shown and hadn’t in some time, but lived in the modern house next door. They also got to see some other part of the farm in the 15-20 minutes that we were. Michael and I spied two guys herding a water buffalo down the road.

We continued on to the YiChang airport and boarded our flight to Shanghai which was sold out. It took an interminable amount of time for everyone to board. The airline was not watching anyone’s carry-ons and everyone was having problems finding space for their bags which what was causing the delay. Michael and I were seated in separate rows in the back 2 rows of the plane and the stewardess helped us stow our bags in one of the locked compartments in the galley of the place where they normally store used food trays.

For me who is 6 foot tall, this was the most miserable flight. The flight was full and there was no leg-room I just opened my book and kept my nose in it and tried to ignore my discomfort. Thankfully the flight was only an hour and a half or so and we landed in Shanghai. It was dark when we deplaned and we were deposited onto the tarmac. We climbed down the stairs and onto a waiting bus which then drove us to Baggage Claim. We were met by our Shanghai guide Alex, our first male guide. Once the luggage carousel came to a stop we realized that 1/3 of our group did not have any luggage. After much haggling with airport personnel we found that for some reason all these bags were put on a flight that left 20 minutes after ours. Mr. Wu would take the people with bags to the bus, Alex would take the others to meet the other plane and would join us whenever everyone had their bags.

The evening was nice. Michael and I stood outside the bus with our driver Chau (chow?) who I liked because he was wearing sneakers (Converse All-Stars). We watched all the people coming out of the airport and after 20 minutes or so we saw Alex come with the rest of our group.

Shanghai at night looked really exciting. All incredible skyscrapers everywhere all lit up in neon. Alex told us that Shanghai had some of the highest buildings in the world. He said it was referred to as “Shanghai Height”. He also told us about this Chinese Olympic hurdle jumper whom he claimed is now referred to as “Shanghai Speed.” Now, here’s a guy with much pride for his city.

Anyway the city looked thrilling and we pulled into a hotel where we would be having our dinner. There was a drunken wedding reception in progress for it was quite noisy and there was a lot of yelling going on. It was actually really hard to concentrate on eating with all the noise. Then two little boys were screaming and fighting in the hall right outside our banquet room and one of the men in our group got up and yelled at them to stop it. I vocalized my support. The kids were really fighting in the hall, yelling, wrestling and attacking each other with chopsticks. Obviously completely neglected by their parents, whatever shape they were in.

Our hotel was the Jian Guo, and it was the best hotel we’d stayed in. It reminded me of Japanese owned hotels we had stayed at in its meticulous design and cleanliness. And our room was beautiful and we had a lovely view over the city. We turned on the television and we had HBO subtitled into Mandarin Chinese and Michael set the timer on the television and we both dozed off.

Thursday October 18th Day 2 on Board the Luxurious Three Kingdoms on the Yangtze

Today we continued cruising. Michael still hasn’t used the shower facilities in our cabin. He’s afraid of them. I was sitting on the toilet and noticed tiny bugs crawling around in our shower. By the way, my health is actually improving. In fact, now I’m slightly constipated. Oh well, I’d rather be constipated at this stage of the game rather than becoming a permanent porcelain tenant.

The weather on the river remains foggy (smoggy?), rainy and overcast and a little cool. We are passing towns, coal delivery chutes, factories, spectacular rock formations. In the afternoon we passed a group of monkeys in the trees, the only ones we’d see. Our tour guide said that it was too cold for them to be out today. We passed other passenger riverboats heading in the opposite direction, boats that looked far more luxurious than ours. The best thing is just not to look, I told myself. I focused instead on the passing boats carrying cargo; cars, coal.

After lunch we had another shore excusion. We disembarked The Three Kingdoms and boarded a smaller tour boat which took us up an arm of the Yangtze called the Shenong Stream. It was a lovely trip, very picturesque with more spectacular cliffs and lovely flora. We also saw what was described as hanging coffins. These were burial spots created by some prehistoric peoples. They managed to lower wooden coffins down cliffs and shove them into these small caves up in the rocks. Well, since the water has risen so much because of the dam they are much easier to see, and each time one was pointed out you could see the wooden coffin sticking out of these little caves. Curious…

The trip up the stream took about an hour. Once we docked we were then transferred to little sampans which held probably 10 people. There was a local market with all manner of wares all set up along this concrete embankment along the river and there must have been 50 of these wooden sampans all lined up waiting for us. We climbed into them with the help of local Chinese men, then they passed out fluorescent orange safety vests to all of us and then they rowed us up this river. There was a man standing at the pointed helm of the boat while 3 or 4 others rowed the thing with huge paddles that they operated in a standing position. I felt sort of guilty, but my guilt was not even challenged yet. It was a lovely trip up-stream as we were usually lower than most of the pampas grass and other tropical foliage growing around the stream.

When the stream became too shallow to row, these guys climbed out of the sampan, tied ropes around themselves and literally dragged the sampans with us in it upstream. It was incredible. Apparently this was what the fisherman did in days past when they were returning from fishing trips and they hit the shallow parts of the river. It was also customary for them to perform this part of the journey naked. In fact, our trip tickets that we were given when our excursion began had an image of the sampan drag printed on it literally from the rear, complete with naked butts and all. When I first got the ticket I exclaimed, “Look! A ticket covered with butts!” We were all amazed then, but we were really amazed now.

We passed a community with a school and all the school children in the upper floors waved and screamed to us as we were dragged by. Then we made a wide U-turn, the guys hurled themselves back into the sampans and we lazily began to drift back downstream.

Michael and I were sitting in the back of the boat and the back oarsman handed me a polished rock that he had apparently fished out of the water, almost like an alabaster egg. I took it from him, delighted and muttered out my best Shie shie. Then he said, “Ten Yuen.” Of course, I thought, everybody’s out to make a buck. I thanked him and gave it back to him and we drifted back to our day boat.

It was a lovely ride back to The Three Kingdoms and we soon left and were back on the river.

The schedule said that we would be passing the third gorge around 6pm so Michael and I wandered out top deck to the covered area completely enclosed by dirty glass and sat in the dirty upholstered chairs and watched the scenery drift by. It was not nearly as spectacular as the previous gorges and wondered why the third gorge was even noted. Just some hillsides, but nothing like we had seen. We relaxed for about an hour and then went to dinner.

Around 10:00 pm that evening we approached the Three Gorges Dam, the largest dam project in the world. However, as it was pitch black out we really couldn’t make much out so we headed out to the front of the boat to see what we could see and people were already starting to congregate to watch our passage through the 5 locks. I wondered what we were going to do once we passed through the locks and were on the other side, because we had a tour of the dam tomorrow so the boat wouldn’t continue sailing until after. But Michael said he had read that it would take an hour or so to pass through each lock, which makes 5 hours.

We watched as we followed the band of lights directing us in the direction of the first lock and we drifted in joining 3 other vessels, one of which was a coal barge which stretched almost the length of the lock and we watched its sailors run about the deck. The lock was well lit so we went from the dark of night to the artificial light of day. The giant steel doors slowly closed behind us and we began to descend as the water was slowly let out of the lock, leaving wet, sticky walls around us. I have been through the Panama Canal twice so it was a familiar procedure to me. As the doors ahead of us began to open I declared that I was tired and was going to bed. And I did.

Wednesday October 17th – Chongqing/Yangtze Cruise

There was a schedule of the day’s activities but the schedule didn’t state what time the boat was scheduled to leave Chongqing. I asked Mr Wu the night before about it and he asked the front desk personnel who yanked out the day’s schedule and starting going down all the activities in a very snotty fashion. I intervened, “But it doesn’t say when the boat sails.” The nasty front desk attendant looked at the schedule and realized we were right, it didn’t say. Well, she didn’t know either. She asked one of the attendants next to her. She wasn’t sure either.

I thought, “oh great, no one even knows when this tub sails!” They finally agreed that it would be sometime between 7 and 8 in the morning.

Michael was up before me and announced that there was no hot water. Let me tell you, I have very fine hair, I have to wash it daily or I look like crap. I got up and went into the bathroom and I had hot water so they must have just turned it on. I attempted a shower with great trepidation assuming that this make-shift shower was going to get the entire bathroom soaking wet. But actually it wasn’t too bad. The ongoing problem with showering was that you were never sure when the water was going to suddenly become freezing cold and I would leap away from the water with the curtain wrapped around me and would have to fiddle with the control until I got the water warm enough to continue with my washing. One of our other group members maintained that whether you got hot or cold water depended on which direction the boat was tipping. After a shower you did though have to mop up the entire bathroom floor. Though there was a drain in front of where the shower curtain pulled the water still went all over the bathroom. I was able to pull myself together admirably and brush my teeth with bottled water and I took my second dose of Cipro and did not have Diarrhea, thank God.

At 7:30 am each morning the boat would give you a wake-up call. I was sitting there in the cabin waiting for Michael to finish in the bathroom when suddenly this music started out of nowhere. At first I thought I was having an auditory hallucination. The music’s volume was low at first but then the volume increased. I was looking all over at the light controls between the beds trying to figure out where the music was coming from. It wasn’t intrusive at all, it was light and pretty music with a Chinese theme. I realized it was the boat’s version of a wake-up call. In case there was anyone that wasn’t up yet. It was actually a nice way to wake up. This was also where we would hear any of the boat’s announcements in the cabin.

We were actually up before breakfast so went outside to look around. It was foggy and soggy. The muddy river rushed around the boat and the city loomed above us from out of the fog. On the pontoon side, the street where we got off our bus to get down to the boat was jammed with tourist buses. On the top floor of our boat a person was serving early morning coffee. It was instant Sanka and was just dreadful, besides not being at all hot. We went back to the cabin.

Before we left the room for breakfast we looked out our window and the boat was already pulling away from the dock and starting to head down the Yangtze. We left our room and headed down the stairs to the dining room for breakfast. Tables were assigned by cabin number. Our group was kept on 2 tables and since Li and Marilyn had left the boat that morning to make a 6:30 am flight to Shanghai we had extra seats at our table so the boat had assigned a Belgian couple to our table, Eric and Collette, currently living in Malaysia. Definitely sophisticated world travelers. Eric worked for one of the major oil firms doing geological exploration work. And they were interesting but definitely opinionated.

Breakfast was a buffet and was fine. American dishes and Chinese. A cook stood there over a sterno frying up eggs and there was bacon and something scary that looked like it could be Spam. Hard-boiled eggs, noodles, Congi, the usual breakfast buffet.

Poor Mr. Wu had to spend the night sleeping on one of the cots in their dilapidated massage room. Or was it the infirmary? No one was quite sure. The boat was full so that’s what they do with the escorts apparently. He looked miserable but sloughed it off saying that he was used to it. But now that Li was gone he would actually have a cabin to himself. With Li gone that meant that we would not be learning MahJongg. What was I to do with this incredibly heavy set of MahJongg tiles wrapped in purple paper? They must have weighed 15 pounds.

We went outside on deck and it was still foggy and drizzly. There were 2 levels of viewing areas, the upper was referred to as the Sun deck. The boat’s design had this Chinese theme so the top viewing decks were partially covered with these yellow Chinese style roofs. The sun deck had a sitting area under one of these, the lower deck actually had an enclosed sitting area with big, dirty picture windows where you could sit and watch the passing scenery without being rained on or buffeted about by the wind. Half of this room was usually filled with Chinese playing board games, smoking and being very boisterous and noisy.

Our river guide, Susan would occasionally come out on deck with a microphone and comment on the passing scenery first in Chinese, and then in usually unintelligible English. Our table-mate Collette trapped me as we passed through the first Gorge and told me the story about why her and her husband were on this trip in the first place. It had to do with a bad Swiss travel agent and an auto crash in Cambodia. Michael kept looking for me but I didn’t feel like I could get away from Collette. I kept peering around trying to see the beautiful mountain scenery we passed through, “Oh, this is nothing,” she said, “We’ve been to New Zealand.”

I extracted myself as we began our passage through Gorge #2. I could only wonder how spectacular the sailing would have been when the water was much lower, because as it was we were very close to both banks. You would seriously have felt dwarfed in this little boat surrounded by these enormous cliffs and peaks. But it was still spectacular and very beautiful. It drizzled and was chilly as we sailed and stayed like that for much of the day.

We had lunch at noon and both lunch and dinner had table service instead of a buffet. The dining room was shaped in a horseshoe shape that looked down upon the dance floor in the bar room below. When everyone was in the dining room eating it got really noisy and really, really hot. We finally started opening the windows. As soon as everyone showed up at the table the waitresses started serving food, which was exactly like what we’d been getting; family style Chinese dishes. The food was perfectly fine. They offered a glass of soda if you wanted one but unlike our land meals we had to pay for beer, 20 Yuan. No one ever bought any.

At 2:30 the boat docked at Feng Du where we had a shore excursion to visit the Ghost City. There were a zillion river cruise boats visiting this town so our boat put in right alongside several another boat and when we were finally allowed to disembark we had to walk through two other boats to get to the dock outside. Michael and I found the same formality when we did a river cruise on the Danube. It’s weird. I don’t know how they control security with all these strange people wandering through your boat. But in this case there did seem to be a lot of boat personnel guiding you through the other boats, mainly so you didn’t get lost.

When you finally made it to the shore you had to climb 200 stairs to get to the top at town level. Our guide in Feng Du was Cathy. She explained to us how the city that used to exist along the banks of Feng Du had already been completely dismantled and moved to the other shore to keep from being flooded with the rising water of the dam. You could look down and see where the city had originally been. And when you looked across the water at the new city it was hard to believe that a new town had just plain been built from scratch. I asked Cathy how long it took to build the new city across the river and she said it took 11 years. Unbelievable. When the water from the dam is up to its final height the mountain that Feng Du sits on would be an island.

We walked through a community past shop after shop of goods, some tourist, some local, everything from Chinese clothing to fresh fruits, and all of them yelling at us, “Hello! Hello!” It was a din of Hello’s as we followed our guide Cathy through this arcade of shops. We were originally told that it was 700 steps up to the ghost city. We already did the first 200 when we disembarked the boat. But we were going to miss the next 500 apparently. We were going to be taking a cable car, like a ski lift up the mountain to the ghost city. It was a pleasant ride up the hillside. You weren’t terribly high off the ground. You had tropical greenery around you all the time. If you fell out you would only have been minorly injured, if hurt at all. But it seemed to me that the stairs would have been more like 5000 than 500.

Once at the top we got a brief description of what we were about to see. Cathy explained to us that why this mountain got its reputation as the ghost city was based on these 2 Taoist monks named Yin and Wang who came here to meditate in seclusion during the Han dynasty and their names combined mean “King of the Underworld.” Ok, that’s odd. Then we were told that at that time in history the upper classes were so cruel to the peasants that the hodge-podge of temples and buildings here were designed to simulate your journey into the next world and to demonstrate to the bad guys what hell would be like for them if they were awful enough to end up there.

And the place is loaded with superstition and legend. When you cross the first bridge you have 3 choices of bridges. If you take the middle bridge with a significant-other holding hands you are confirming that your love with last even into the next world and how long depends on the number of steps you take. So Michael and I held hands and took tiny, tiny steps across the bridge. If you took the right or left bridge depended on whether you were praying for health or wealth.

When you passed through the first gate women had to step through with their right foot, men with their left. I can’t now recall why. You immediately passed into a Buddhist temple with a huge, incredible golden Buddha.

This place was lousy with tourists. It was unbelievable. As soon as your guide would get you together and start to explain things to you 4 or 5 other groups would troop in with their guide yelling at them and God help you when the group came in with the guide on a scratchy microphone. You seriously couldn’t hear a damned thing then. I lost probably 50% of the guide’s commentary because I couldn’t hear over the din of people talking and other guides shrieking all around me. We passed through a Taoist temple with its huge statue of some deity or other.

As we progressed up the hill we eventually started to enter the otherworld. We learned that if the building we were passing through was red, it signified heaven, if it was blue, it signified Hell. We passed a series of creature statues that were physical representations of something like the 7 deadly sins, in monster form.

There was a stone that you could stand on with one foot that could supposedly tell you if you were good or bad by how long you could stay on the rock. You needed to stay on the rock for a full 3 seconds. I didn’t see anyone that could do it. Me included. You know what that means. Especially since in the blue building at the top there were all the kings of the underworld with a gruesome diorama of what we all have waiting for us in Hell if we aren’t good. It reminded me of Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum Chamber of Horrors. Only this was in miniature. But it showed people being torn apart, being sawed in half, run over by horses, and on and on with much blood and screaming and torment. Sort of an Asian version of Heironymous Bosch.

On the way out Michael and I both decided to cross on the Health bridge. Even though the Cipro appeared to be working I wasn’t taking any chances.

That night was the Captain’s dinner on board. I had actually brought some nice clothes with me so I put them on to look nice. There was champagne on the table. The Captain was introduced in his nautical dress whites and he made a spirited speech in Chinese which, at it’s conclusion, all the Chinese on board started to cheer and clink their glasses. So we joined in as well not having any idea what we were cheering about.

Later Jim accidentally knocked Lorraine’s champagne glass over and they broke the stem in their efforts to catch it as it fell. The ship then presented them with a bill for 25 Yuan for the broken glass. We couldn’t believe it. I thought it was so tacky. After dinner our waitress informed us that if we wanted a dessert of ice cream and cake we could order it extra for 25 Yuan. We all declined. Mr. Wu later reimbursed Jim and Lorraine for the cost of the glass.

There was supposed to be a crew show that night so we all gathered in the bar in chairs situated around the dance floor. They played disco music and some Chinese couples got up and danced. It looked like fun. Finally our river guide Susan came out and introduced the crew show. About Eight crew women performed two choreographed dance numbers and a male member of the crew sang a Chinese pop ballad. For a crew show they were fine. Then river guide Susan came out and introduced a lottery. A large board was wheeled out onto the dance floor and Susan showed the prizes that you could win, none of which seemed like anything I wanted. It appeared to be more tourist crap. You had to purchase an entry for 20 Yuan. And if you entered you got a bottle of beer. I leaned over to Michael and whispered, “So, what she’s saying is that if you want to get a lottery ticket you have to buy a bottle of beer.” No one was responding to the cheesy lottery, and if she was going to go at it until all the tickets were sold this was going to take awhile. So we decided it was time to go.

We went back to the cabin and read for awhile until I got too drowsy, took another Cipro and went to sleep.

Tuesday October 16th, 2007 - Xi’an/Chongqing

Today we packed our bags and checked out of our hotel. Today we were to fly to Chongqing (pronounce Chong Ching, not Chung King) to board a Yangtze River boat for our cruise up to the 3 Gorges Dam. We were excited. That was going to be different and interesting.

We discovered that yet another member of our group had came down ill with the same intestinal symptoms, vomiting and diarrhea. By this time everybody in the group was dousing themselves with Purell every chance they got. At meals it would get circulated around the table on the Lazy-Susan like a platter of sweet n’ sour pork.

We had breakfast again in the hotel and then boarded the bus. We didn’t have an enormous amount of time this morning as we had to get to the airport and go through all that rigamaroll but as a special treat our guide had made arrangements with the local grade school to take us to a kindergarten to see the children.

The bus parked in a narrow, tree lined street and as we were half a block from the school we could hear the children talking and screaming, as children do. We entered through an iron gate in a low wall and climbed a flight of stairs to the kindergarten. We waited outside in the hall as our guide went into the room and spoke with the teacher then we could hear the teacher talking to the kids in Chinese and then we were led into the room. As soon as the children saw us they all began screaming, not in fright but in amazement and delight. There must have been 40 little ones all sitting along the wall at the windows in tiny little chairs. The women in our group took to the little ones immediately, talking to them and sitting in the chairs next to them. This particular school was a private school that the parents had to pay extra money for, whose main thrust was teaching the kids English. So as we found out, the kids knew basic words for things. We could point to our nose and the little boy could say “nose”, and he knew all the major points of the human face. They couldn’t speak in sentences but they were definitely learning words very well.

The teacher led them in English nursery rhymes that they sang for us. We participated in playing and singing “London Bride is Falling Down” with the kids.

You could definitely tell personality as well at such a young age. Some of the kids were very outgoing, some were very shy, some couldn’t stop rough-housing with their neighbor. One of the little boys actually tried to hit me when I tried to shake his hand. We took pictures of the nap room next door with little wooden bunks for sleeping with mattresses and bed-rolls.

As we left the room we stopped in the courtyard to observe two groups of children performing led calisthenics. One group worked with pom-poms, the other with two colored plastic rings with bells on the inside so they tinkled as they moved them. Chinese people on the street also had stopped outside the wall and wrought iron to watch. It was all very cute and a wonderful thing to do for our group.

Our bus was then on its way to the Xi’an airport which took nearly an hour. I was surprised at how hazy it was. The guides always refered to it as fog. We were sure it was pollution, or smog. But here it was surprisingly bad and seemed to get worse the further out of town we got. You could barely see a quarter of a mile ahead of you it was so thick. It was amazing. I guess that’s what comes from burning coal as your primary source of heat.

I still had my diarrhea though it was under control, but especially when I was on the jumpy bus my stomach would cramp up and it was somewhat uncomfortable. When we arrived at the airport we had time before the flight and it was also the only time that we would have to eat lunch so we dragged our carry-ons into a restaurant in the airport. I complained to Li about my stomach cramps and she gave me some Immodium-Extra that was not only designed to stop the diarrhea but control the cramping as well. Except for the first day, even with the diarrhea and cramping I was still eating well, and I munched down the Chinese lunch today as well.

By the time it was time to go through security the plane was already being announced that it was time to board. My Wu had our boarding passes already and he passed them out. He also had a selection of small bags that the luggage people returned and wanted us to carry on because they said our luggage was too heavy. That seemed really strange.

They always made this issue about the fact that any time our luggage was being handled by anyone else whether it was their luggage transporter or the airline that the luggage had to be locked. I had 2 pieces that would not lock because the wonderful airline baggage handlers had broken off the zipper pulls and rings that fit together for a pad lock the first time I used the luggage. So it was suggested that I carry on my small bag. When I went through security they spotted a pair of barber scissors I had in the bag, because I wasn’t originally planning on carrying it on. So I had to give the scissors up. They were for trimming my moustache. So when we got to the gate the flight had just started boarding. When we got to the entrance to the airplane itself the flight attendance took our carry-ons away from us again advising that the overheads were too full and they would check them. If I’d known that I wouldn’t have tried to carry mine on anyway and lose my scissors. And all the people who had their carry-ons returned to them by the luggage people ended up having to check them in anyway.

The flight was full. The airport and gate was immaculately clean and manned by friendly personnel in clean, pressed uniforms. We flew Hainan Air and the crew wore flowered print shirts and white trousers reminiscent of a Hawaiian airline. It was a relatively short flight but they served beverages and a weird sandwich that we decided had a thin layer of tuna on it that was labeled “Muslim Sandwich”.

We were met in Chongqing by our guide Crystal. She told us that Chongqing was the biggest city in China and I’m telling you, if we thought Beijing was huge, Chongqing took the cake. Chongqing has a population of 30 million people and over 50 square kilometers. Crystal told us it would take an entire day to cross the municipality of Chongqing. Now I was wondering if what they were describing as Chongqing was the city itself or a larger, more amorphous area like a county. Because that is huge for a single city.

We were also told that we would not see bicycles there because the city is too hilly so they are not practical. It is also one of a handful of Chinese cities that are referred to as “ovens” because of its intense summer heat. In the summer when the heat reaches 108, everyone works only half a day.

The city was astounding, all incredibly modern skyscrapers. And the city all ups and downs just like Crystal told us. The first stop was the Peoples Hall. The Peoples Hall sat above a huge city square that had a 3 Gorges Museum sitting behind it. When we arrived there was a throng of people in the square with someone talking on a PA system. We asked Li what they were talking about and she told us that it was some sort of fundraiser.

The Peoples Hall was a relatively new building built in the style of ancient China with the three-tiered circular roof just like the Temple of Heaven in Beijing. They had also copied the intricate painting of blue and red and gold that you saw all over the historical buildings in China from the Forbidden City to the Summer Palace. We were escorted into the theater where the Communist Party holds their meetings. A huge domed assembly hall with giant swags hanging from the curtains on both sides.

After the dope on the theater we were brought into a room where we were given a lecture on Chinese Calligraphy and Painting. The gentleman doing the presenting on this one had a very thick Chinese accent so I could only distinguish a portion of what he was saying, but I was catching that he was describing the difference between certain schools of painting. While he presented his lecture an artist created a piece of floral painting in front of us. It was a game to try to figure out what these spare brush strokes would eventually end up being.

Afterwards we were given time to wander about the shop. Another shopping event. They did however, have a beautiful set of 4 crane paintings about 4 feet high that if I were a millionaire I would have bought, they were exquisite.

We then were guided on foot off to the right of the People’s hall into a street market where we got to see the local people shopping and what was for sale. Crystal advised us to be very careful with our belongings since we would be in some crowded areas and pick pockets were everywhere. It was a typical foreign fresh market with vegetables, and things that were absolutely undescribable, raw meats and then outside baskets of live chickens, ducks and rabbits. I’m a carnivore, I don’t object to the killing of live animals for food but these people were butchering these animals right there on the street in front of the other animals. I don’t know, maybe it’s my personifying animal emotions but I can’t believe the whole experience wouldn’t have been traumatizing to the other animals sitting there in jail, just waiting for their time to die.

And then Michael pointed out to me how we were always told that if we visited Asia how we were not supposed to hang around live fowl, like chickens due to the bird flu. That made me suddenly very nervous and I started holding my breath until we were out of breathing site of the chickens.

The bus met us at our point of exit from the market and we dodged careening cars and trucks to get across the street to access it. The bus then took us up to Eling Park for a gorgeous view of the city and the convergence of the Yangtze and Jialing rivers. The park is lush though it is an uphill walk all the way. Li and I had been discussing learning MahJongg, and as we walked up to the top of the park we passed 4 Chinese sitting at a table playing MahJongg. It was fascinating watching them play, they built walls of tiles and then “shuffled” them by picking up whole stacks from partners walls and moving them to their own. Then they played by taking tiles from the middle and when they had a match they would display them out like cards and when their hand was over they would bang on the table with one of their tiles. Imagine all this but happening really fast, it was hard to keep up with what was actually happening. They didn’t at all seem to mind us standing there staring at them.

We continued up the hill to the Three Gorges Museum. There a guide showed us an enormous mural that spanned all the walls of the display center showing the entire range of the river that would be effected by the building of the dam complete with renderings of the communities and cities along the river and then a red line would show how far up the river would expected to rise. Entire communities were being relocated, entire cities were being rebuilt on opposite banks and populations moved. Historic sites were being moved up hillsides. It was the most incredible thing I’d ever seen. This rise of the water would affect a million people. The guide however was optimistic, most of the people were excited about the move since everyone was being compensated, and the younger people wanted an excuse to move to the cities anyway, but the older people whose families had lived in these locations for generations were the ones upset over the whole thing. The display gave us a good visual to comprehend the enormity of this project. The Three Gorges Dam project is the biggest dam project in the world.

Also in the park was the previous home of Chiang Kai Shek, but was now a gift shop disguised as a museum. There were photos of Chiang Kai Shek displayed with descriptions in Chinese and we asked Li to translate some of them.

We had a wonderful meal, one of the best of the trip at The Park Hotel where Li got into a fight with the staff over serving us a second plate of these wonderful little pastries that you dip in a honey sauce. It was really funny whenever she would talk to the staff about something, we could never tell whether she was conversing normally or having an argument.

After dinner, on the way to our boat we stopped at a supermarket to pick up water and anything else we wanted to snack on since stuff like that on the boat would be overpriced and expensive. All the buses with tourists for the boats must have stopped at the same place because there were hawkers with postcards and tourist junk waiting for us outside like vultures. We bought 8 bottles of water. I wanted chocolate but their Dove bars that they had imported in was too expensive. Michael bought dried CuttleFish, what a show-off!

When we arrived at our boat, The Three Kingdoms, the bus parked on the road above and we had to carry our hand articles down a ramp and stairway and then across a series of pontoons where our boat was parked way out almost in the middle of the river. There were several other passenger boats sitting in the river as well. It was amazing how powerful the water was rushing by as we crossed over. By this time it was dark so it was impossible to get a good look at the boat. It was probably best.

As we entered the boat on the first deck, we were welcomed on board by staff holding up dragon heads and clapping cymbals together. It was cute and we were excited to board. We then climbed a set of stairs into the lobby. A large Chinese style painting hung over the front desk and a large circular Chinese carpet covered the entire lobby. Mr. Wu got our cabin keys and told us that he had insisted that our group get the best located cabins on the 3rd deck. That sounded ok. We climbed the stairs to our deck. When we entered the cabin the wooden liner crossing the bottom of the door frame came loose and I kicked it with my foot. The cabin was quite small with two single beds at a large window. The window had a Chinese style wooden latticework design at the top of the window frame and the curtain sat inside it. The bathroom’s paint was peeling off in places and was rusting. There was no shower but a shower-head placed at one side of the bathroom with a shower curtain closing the area off. The furniture in the cabin such as it was, was unuseable and old. There was virtually no closet space. And what closets that existed were heavy doors held in place by painted wood pegs.

We were to explore the ship later and found filthy windows, broken down exercise equipment, furniture whose upholstery was dirty and full of holes. There were times when there was no hot water and times when there was no water at all. We had tiny bugs in our shower. One person in our group reported that when they showered the water leaked into their stateroom and got their luggage all wet. It was really unacceptable to western passengers. We saw better boats on our voyage down the Yangtze, some with balconies and one had a disco that we could see people dancing, fancy dining rooms. So our ship was not necessarily China, we somehow ended up on the bargain boat. Li was quite upset. Mr. Wu. said that at the time of booking that this was the only boat that had enough room for our entire group. We saw another boat, The Dragon owned by the same company and one of the people in our group managed to get on board and look around and reported back that it was luxurious in comparison. Why the company, Dragon Cruises allowed the Three Kingdoms to fall into such disrepair was a shame. It needed to be pulled and put into drydock and completely overhauled. It wasn’t just the cabin space, the entire outside needed to be stripped and repainted, the furniture needed to be replaced, the cabins needed to be gutted and completely redone, especially the bathrooms.

We went out on deck and watched the neon lights of the city dancing all over the banks of the river. There was a long band of colorful neon along the river-bank accompanied by a series of 5 or 6 thin spotlights that would rotate across the water, and this huge skyscraper across the river would respond with its spotlights scraping the river. It was delightful to watch and Michael tried to get a picture of it but we all thought it unusual that a Communist country would be paying for this kind of fluff?

Li knocked on our door later that night and reported that unfortunately she had to deal with Marilyn’s lost passport problem. After the boat trip we would get into Shanghai so late on Friday that she would have no time to get her passport and Chinese visa reissued. Because of air schedules her only alternative was to skip the Hell boat cruise and fly to Shanghai the next morning and wait for us there. Mr. Wu would take care of us in the meantime.

I had a particularly violent attack of Diarrhea that night and Michael and I decided that I would then start taking Cipro, the antibiotic, since my intestinal infection didn’t appear to be clearing up on its own. I took my first dose and another Immodium and we went to sleep on our dumpy boat.

Monday October 15th Xi’an

We decided that I would take 400 mg of Ibuprofen every 4 hours, that our main interest was to keep my fever down. I could do that. I had a supply with me that I would carry with me and the bus always had a supply of bottled water for us. As stated I wasn’t experiencing urgent bathroom needs, just regular ones. So I actually ate some food for breakfast in he lobby of the hotel and didn’t actually feel too horrible.

As we were grouping in the lobby waiting for our 8:30 am bus I heard that another one of our group had become ill during the night and was vomiting as well as having diarrhea. I saw her come down with her backpack on but apparently needed the bathroom as soon as she hit the lobby and then decided that she would be better off staying in her hotel room for the day. Today was the Terra-cotta warrior’s day. I would poop my pants before I would miss those. We also heard that they never found Marilyn’s passport. Li would have to take her somewhere to try and get her passport and visa replaced or she would never get out of China.

I hit the lobby bathroom one more time and we headed out at our appointed time with Li, Mr. Wu and our city guide Lisa. Our first stop was the Banpo Neolithic Matriarchal Village. This was obviously to be a day of archaeological sites. On the way our bus driver decided to ignore the fact that a closed freeway overpass was unfinished and when he tried to drive over two sections of asphalt that had not been sealed the bus wasn’t able to clear the gap and he tore the step off of the bus. He stopped the bus got out, picked the step off of the ground and tossed it into the baggage compartment underneath. I thought it was scary and unsafe but Li and Lisa insisted that he knew what he was doing and we were perfectly safe.

Banpo is a prehistoric village that was unearthed in the 1950s. The village grounds occupied a physical area of 50,000 square meters, and consisted primarily of a residential section, a pottery area, and burial grounds. The digs revealed the remains of 45 houses, 200-odd storage pits, 6 kilns, 250 tombs, and more than 10,000 stone tools and everyday articles. These people lived at the tail end of the Stone Age, so were just beginning to get into agriculture.

It is a very nice museum that covers the actual digs in a pavilion with information showing what you are looking at and television monitors with videos showing how all the structures were built based on the ground markings that we were looking at. You are basically looking at holes and structure boundaries in the dirt. To contrast what you were seeing in the dig the videos created in a time-lapse fashion the creation of these primitive dwellings made out of sticks, poles and clay and the end product was actually quite sophisticated.

There were several gift shops on the site so when we were done with the museum we wandered about looking to see what was for sale. Several of the ladies were interested in the folk painting.

We then headed out to a terra cotta factory that not only made life sized (and miniature) recreations of the terra cotta warriors that we would be seeing later today but pottery, lacquer ware and furniture. This was primarily another shopping event. But they showed us what terra cotta was like before it was fired and we got to see the workers creating the recreations out of molds. There was a warrior statue at the entrance without a head and each person in our group took turns having their picture taken standing behind the warrior with their own head sticking out of the armor. I frowned menacingly to match the warriors.

Inside they had an entire ensemble of full sized warriors all lined up. And you could purchase full sized warriors and they would ship them, or smaller versions and smaller still or you could buy heads or hands or arms. One member of our group bought a full sized one for their garden. Some one else bought a head.

We continued on for lunch. As we approached the Terra Cotta complex we drove through what looked like Chinese style condo’s, very clean, very western and modern in their duplex style of attached housing. Except that they must have belonged to farmers because many of them had corn drying out in the sun in what would have been their driveway. It was very strange. And the decorative wall that surrounded the complex had little terra cotta warrior miniatures as decoration in spots so we knew we were close to the complex.

Our restaurant was there and their buffet was very good. By this time I was actually hungry and I ate like a maniac, but I still had a questionable intestinal tract.

After lunch we hopped back on the bus which drove us out of this complex over to the warrior digs. As usual there were a million buses there. As explained by our guide we would find 4 different buildings there. Pits 1, 2 and 3, and the optional museum that housed the bronze chariot.

The first thing we did was go into a 360 degree cinema and stood and watched a documentary about the Qin (pronounced chin) emperor who had the warriors created for his burial chamber. It was interesting in its historical recreations but was of poor quality in comparison to the same technology Michael and I have seen at Disney World for example. But the surprising thing was that as soon as this emperor was dead, and he wasn’t well liked, a rebel group broke into his tomb, smashed up all the warriors and set fire to the place. So all those photos we’ve been seeing since the 90’s of the warriors all standing in place? All reassembled by archaeologists from bits and pieces in the digs. I couldn’t believe it.

Pit 1 was the most assembled of the digs. And again, like the Banpo village the digs were now enclosed within a huge covered pavilion with the tourist viewing areas set above the digs themselves so you were actually looking down on the site. And of the statues now reassembled and standing in rows you could see how the tomb was structured with wooden beams and clay separating each row of warriors, and further down the pit, where they hadn’t started excavating, you could see the remains of the sagging roof beams, underneath must be another treasure trove of statue pieces just waiting for their chance to become whole again.

When you entered the pits there were signs asking you not to use flash on your cameras. Our guide told us to ignore them that it was no longer an issue. Apparently when the dig was first discovered the warriors still showed their original paint and they didn’t want them to fade prematurely. But the warriors had long since lost any color. The only color left was in the photos that were hung on the wall showing what the terra cotta looked like when it was first exposed to the air.

And as you walked along the pit you could see exactly what the archaeologists were first dealing with. Arms and legs and heads and horse butts all sticking up out of the dirt. And some of the pieces appeared to be literally buried in solid earth. It was the horse butt that I saw sticking out of a solid block of earth. I wondered if the entire dig was once a solid block of dirt.

In the back of the Pit #1 complex you could see where they were in the process of assembling warriors. There were plastic containers holding warrior pieces and the warriors that were standing had major pieces of them missing, shard holes here and there, just waiting to be discovered and replaced

The story was that this farmer was digging a well on his property and came upon a piece of a warrior. And that’s how the thing began. The property was purchased from him, he was given some honorary title and never had to work again. The agreement was that he appear at the dig complex at some point during the day, and you could get his autograph or shake a hand, or have him sign your souvenir book. We did not see him when we were there.

We were about to leave Pit number 1 when a group of Chinese youths approached me and one asked in broken English where I was from. I was a little taken aback by his aggressive nature. I told him I was American. He then asked if he could have his picture taken with me. I couldn’t imagine why but said yes, and he posed and smiled while his buddies snapped a photo and then another one of them joined me and they took another picture. They then thanked me and continued on. I was totally perplexed. What was that all about?

We were taken to Pit #3 next. Pit number 3 was smaller than Pit#1 but as was explained in the signage was completed and would not be excavated further. It seemed deeper than Pit #1 but had a collection of warriors and a chariot.

Pit #2 was definitely a work in progress with body parts and pieces of horses, chariots, burnt timbers and sagging roofs, a good vision of what the original probably looked like when they had gotten down that far. There were beautiful assembled warriors behind glass that you could get quite close to and one that was painted to look like what they would have looked like originally. Quite garish actually.

We then wandered on to the Iron chariot building. It was a very dark exhibit containing a chariot with horses and driver and covered wagon complete with full bridle and reins all made out of iron. This was discovered in another location but part of this whole burial There was lots of technical information about the materials found in their iron after it was tested and how much they learned about their culture from reassembling the wagon and bridles.

What they have not uncovered yet is this Emperors actual burial chamber, which from writings is supposed to be quite elaborate, but it has not been dug up yet but they seem to have a very good idea where it is buried. It is supposed to have a map of the world in it with the seas created out of liquid mercury, per a National Geographic magazine article.

We rejoined the group in front of the Tea House, on the grounds, a beautiful Chinese teahouse. We wandered in and it was hot and crowded with tourists but was quite ornate, all dark wood.

This evening we were to see a Chinese Cultural Show. On our drive out to the terra-cotta warriors we occasionally passed these huge billboards showing a man and woman in historical costume, as if they were an ancient Emperor and his Empress, only they were in these wild, dance poses. He was standing with his arms outstretched above him staring down at her and she was below him with her arms outstretched as well, looking up at him. I guess these were supposed to be dramatic dance-like poses. But Lisa our guide told us that this was the poster for the show we would be seeing.

The bus pulled in off the street into this lot packed with buses. Everywhere we went we were besieged in a sea of buses and tourists. We were told that there was no reason to push into the theater since they wouldn’t be able to seat us yet so Michael and I wandered about the crowded, noisy streets for 10 minutes and then wandered back into the lot and everyone in our group was gone. We Pushed our way into the theater which by this time was wall to wall people all crammed in, I guess thinking that if they weren’t all crushed before the show they wouldn’t get in. Our group stood as far away from these crazy people as possible.

Based on our timing at the Terra-Cotta warriors we were going to see a later show, but it would have put our dinner so late that Lisa negotiated to get us in on an earlier schedule. The doors opened to the interior of the theater and the crowd rushed the doors. We just stood off to the side and waited for Lisa to tell us something. She finally started waving her Oregon sign and said she wanted 10 people only first. Michael and I joined the first wave. We were wedged into a table in the back far corner. The members of our group in the far corner seats could not see the stage and had to stand. We watched as the other 10 got seated further down with a far better viewing location. They told us later that they were seated at a table that really didn’t have spaces for 10 more people, that they were actually just kind of jammed into spaces.

The show seriously reminded me of a Las Vegas show. I bet they brought in a Las Vegas person in to help them create and direct it. When they first thought of bringing Broadway shows to Las Vegas they discovered that Las Vegas audiences didn’t have a long attention span and wouldn’t sit still for a 3 hour long theater experience. They wanted something splashy and short. Hence the 90-minute extravaganzas that all the hotels do now. And this was no exception. The costumes and sets were fabulous. An actor playing an emperor of the Tang dynasty and his Empress (?) would come out before each act and he would introduce it in Chinese and she would translate into English. The curtain would rise on a sumptuous fantasy Asian set and we would either get a musical offering or a dance piece. I loved the opening set which was an entire group of men and women in elaborate Chinese dress playing various string and woodwind instruments. However, let me also say that though pretty, I wondered if this was more Chinese style western music for tourists. However, it was very beautiful, was beautifully presented and fun to watch and hear. Aside from the first dance number where the chorus line danced with the yards of fabric, the dance numbers got a little much, especially at the end where the Empress character comes out and does her ballet number in what looks like a Chinese inspired Las Vegas showgirl outfit.

We were then shoved up several flights of stairs where we were ushered into tables for the dumpling dinner. It was indeed wonderful. Every few minutes a waitress would appear with a big bamboo steamer, which she would put on the table, and announce, “Shrimp”, and then leave. There would be just enough for everyone at the table to have 1 of each. But by the end of the meal we counted 19 different dumpling courses. It was really wonderful. We had a duck filled dumpling that was shaped like a little duck with orange eyes. And a fish dumpling that was shaped like a fish with a tail and green peas for eyes. And pork, and chicken and beef. And the meal ended with tiny little fish pearl dumplings that were put into soup and had a strong taste. We prayed that they wouldn’t bring any more dumpling courses because we were just stuffed. It was the funnest meal thing we’d done. We waddled out of there and got bussed back to the hotel.

Sunday October 14th – Xi’an

I awoke on the train in my upper berth at 3:30 in the morning with flu symptoms. I was achy and I felt like I had a fever. I laid there for a few moments thinking about how horrid I felt and I how I didn’t want to move, but had to. Everyone else in the compartment was fast asleep. I swung my legs out of the bunk and felt my way down to the floor and first tip toed down the hall to the bathroom and peed. I sat. Using bathrooms on a train is a risky business. Stability is no guarantee at any time. I found my way back to our compartment and climbed back up to the bunk. I pulled my overnight bag down from the storage space that I had stowed it and dug out my supply of Ibuprofen that I had brought and the bottle of water I had with me. I gobbled three of them and lay back down. I lay there and rolled back and forth the rest of the night. Every time another train stormed by heading back in the opposite direction I woke up again. By morning I was exhausted and I still felt like hell. The only thing I could think of was that the protracted foot massage had released toxins into my system that I was trying to deal with. I knew that was not an unusual reaction to intense Reflexology treatments and those kids in that herbal medicine clinic worked on our feet for a long time.

As daybreak came the train car started to come alive again and we all woke up and I climbed down from my bunk and we sat and watched the morning dawn on rural China. I took another batch of Ibuprofen and was feeling like I could survive. The other thing was that my stomach seemed very gassy yet visits to the train bathroom yielded no results. Which is not unusual for me. If I am in foreign situations where I am not comfortable my body will usual respond in kind subconsciously, especially as I was to find out later today.

Li, Terry, Michael and I watched the towns and farming homes fly by. They all seemed to have corn on the roofs drying. Some appeared to be shucked and to be lying about in bright yellow carpets of kernels, and others seemed to be drying as husks, and often they would be decoratively hanging over the eaves of the farm houses in rows like curtain swags.

The train arrived in Xi’an at 8:20am and the most that any of us had been able to do was brush our teeth. We were looking forward to checking into our hotel and getting cleaned up. I spoke to several of the people in our group and I was not the only person who did not sleep well.

We met our new guide, Lisa. It was funny that all our guides throughout our tour would begin by telling us that their Chinese name would be unpronounceable for us so they would give us some Western name to use. Lisa, armed with our iconic green Oregon flag walked us through the train station and out onto the street. She explained to us that there is nowhere for the buses to park in this train station so normally we would have to walk a long way to get to the bus, but that she had advised the driver to arrive 3 or 4 hours early to get a prime parking spot.

We were driven to our hotel the Le Garden and when we arrived were told that our rooms were not ready and our luggage had not arrived. So we were to avail ourselves of the buffet breakfast and we would do a morning tour and return before lunch to freshen up in our rooms.

The bus drove us towards the Xi’an city wall. Beijing had a city wall at one time that encircled the entire city but now only remnants remained as the remains of the city wall were torn down in the 50’s and 60’s. Xi’an still had its original city wall intact. Lisa told us that we had a surprise in store.

When we arrived at the city wall our bus stopped at an entrance with a huge closed wooden gate. In front of this gate was a woman in ceremonial costume and two men dressed as guards. Their costumes were elaborate and colorful. The woman welcomed us to Xi’an and the guards began to call out something and were answered by what sounded like a squadron behind the huge door.

The gates were opened and in front of us was a huge yellow palanquin with two stately people dressed as the Emperor and Empress of China. They were flanked by guards and female attendants all on a huge red carpet. It was an incredible image. Here it was 10 in the morning, cold and a bit foggy and these people in full regalia were doing this wonderful performance, just for us! Maybe it was because I was tired, or slightly ill, or both, but I was just amazed and it nearly brought tears to my eyes. It was so unexpected!

We were greeted again, presented with keys to the city and a passport, as it would have been in the Tang dynasty and a woman came out and performed a dance with red streamers, the ladies in waiting danced, the guards performed a number flying great yellow flags and an acrobat came out and balanced a large ceramic jug on his nose.

Then we had a group photo taken with everyone in the group and were left to explore the wall on our own. We climbed the stairs to the top of the wall. It was really huge and surprisingly wide. And there were locals up there walking their babies in strollers and riding their bikes. We realized even though it was a great tourist attraction it was also a convenient means of conveyance, to get where you needed to go and keep your self out of the traffic down below. There was also a canal that ran along the wall.

As we drove about during the day however I was never sure if we were within the wall or outside the wall. As we drove about Xi’an we would pass the bell tower and drum tower which faced each other down one of the main streets, enormous three tiered roof structures which in the 14th century were used to mark the morning and end of day.

Finally it was time to return to the hotel for our room and a chance to relax and clean up. As soon as we got to our room and I was able to use a bathroom in peace and comfort my digestive tract let go and I had a violent bout of diareeha. Hmmmm, I thought. Well, perhaps this is just a one-time thing due to the disturbance of the train trip and the foot massage and my system can now return to normal.

Our first stop before lunch was the Great Goose Pagoda. It was originally built to house all the Buddhist manuscripts that the monk Xuanzang brought back to China from his journeys to India. It was distinctively unlike any of the architecture we’d seen so far. It was beige colored, lacking the garish colors of say, the Forbidden City and is 64 meters high, built largely from wood and brick. What was interesting about observing the grounds was seeing the Chinese pay their respects to the big stature of the Buddha which sat in the middle of the Pagoda. They purchased big red candles and long sticks of incense tied in bundles, and lit them and presented them to the statue, often by kneeling down on pillows at the foot of the statue and bowing. A huge iron bowl filled with sand held all the candles as their red wax ran down everything. There were other statues flanking the main one, and a shop selling souvenirs, and another selling artwork. For an additional fee you could climb the pagoda.

We went to a restaurant for lunch that featured Hot Pot. Each person’s place setting held a sterno burner with a brassier filled with broth. We then picked the raw items we wanted off of the Lazy-Susan and plunged it into our broth and cooked it and then extracted it with our chopsticks and then dipped it into a sauce that we created ourselves and ate it. There was a table off to the side that contained all the makings of the sauce and everyone grouped around the table with their dipping bowls and created their own personal sauce. The food included vegetables and thin slices of raw meat. Personally, I just had no appetite. So I didn’t create a sauce, I just used what they had at the table and I ate what I could. I was also, for the next 2 days to use every civilized restroom as they appeared to me and I continued to have stomach cramps and diarrhea. But at least there wasn’t an urgency to my digestive problem. I was fine from location to location although my cramps got worse as the day progressed but I was able to calmly continue my touring but just as long as I used each bathroom as they appeared.

Rule number one when touring China. The only trustworthy bathrooms are in Hotel lobbies, Restaurants and Museums. Public “Toilets’ are usually horrible things and don’t provide toilet paper. You bring your own. Before we left on this trip a friend of Michael’s gave him a care package of little items to have on the trip and one was a little package of toilet paper. And I thought, “What’s that all about?” I know now.

Oh yes, the bathrooms. I’m sure you’ve all heard about the “squatters”. They still have them in China, but surprisingly enough they are more civilized. Even though they sit flush in the floor they actually have porcelain liner like a Price Pfister fixture. I never had to use one thank god. At one point I, as an experiment went into a stall that had one and tried to attempt the position that I would be required to assume and found that I wasn’t sure if I could get back up again, without handles in the wall to hold onto. I wasn’t sure how they did it. And when I asked Li about it we weren’t sure whether you were supposed to face the back wall, or face the door. Lisa, our guide got involved and cleared it up that you were to face the door just like a Western toilet.

After lunch we were engaged in another thinly veiled shopping experience. We were taken to a Jade factory. We were met at the elevator by a gentleman who showed us the masters who, behind glass, carved and worked their jade. Then we were given a dissertation on the difference between Jadeite and Nephrite. Then the group was turned loose in their Jade store. Michael and I looked around and indeed, much of it was very beautiful and there were some beautiful pieces and colors.

Li grabbed us and asked us if we wanted Mr. Wu to take us downtown while the women Jade shopped. We thanked her profusely. Mr. Wu took us by the arm and walked us over to a cab and the three of us headed downtown for a look at how the local Xi’anians lived. We got out of the cab in the middle of the shopping district. He pointed out the biggest shopping center in Xi’an and told us he’d meet us back here in 1 hour.

We climbed the stairs to this building and found ourselves in the atrium of a huge 9 story, chrome plated shopping plaza. We mounted the escalators and began to explore the land of Chinese consumerism. They had everything in this mall and more. I saw every brand of clothing I ever knew plus what appeared to be European brands of sportswear and suits and shoes. We checked out the housewares and bedroom stuff. This mall had a Starbucks in the bottom where Michael checked his iPhone using the stores WiFi and downloaded his email. One of the clerks spotted us and came over and fawned over his iPhone so Michael showed it to him. The Starbucks were the only place where I saw Caucasians.

We walked the streets with the mobs out shopping. It was incredible. This was a Sunday evening around dinnertime. In the states you would not have found anyone out at this time, but here, it seemed like everyone was out. We crossed the streets with mobs as cars and trucks and buses ignored our walk signal and sped around us and through us, at times we were trapped in the middle of a 3 lane street with cars flying by on both sides of us as we tried to get across. And this didn’t seem to bother the other pedestrians or the drivers. This appeared to be business as usual. It was exhilarating and frightening. The young people we saw on the streets of Beijing and here in Xi'an were as Western and modern as anyone in the states with trendy clothes and punk hair-do's.

At our appointed time we met Mr. Wu back at the corner. I got confused because there appeared to be multiple Starbucks on the corners of just this one busy street. We tried to pay for the cab back to the hotel but Mr. Wu wouldn’t hear of it. When we got back to the hotel we found Li in the lobby. One of the women in our group had had her passport stolen. They were meticulously going through her backpack.

Tonight we were supposed to be having a Western buffet dinner in the hotel. I saw little Western about it. It seemed similar to the same food choices we were seeing at breakfast. But I did notice that had a Teppanyaki bar open. I had no appetite. And after a couple of bites decided that I needed to go back to the room. I excused myself and shaking with fever I barely got back to the room and the bathroom. I was so chilled I was shaking and could barely get the key in the door my hands were shaking so hard. I took a hot shower to warm up and when Michael came upstairs he took my temperature with a thermometer he had brought with him and I had a 101 degree fever.

I took 600 mg of Ibuprofen and tried to sleep. At 2 am I woke up and Michael took my temp again. It had gone down. But in a couple hours it was back up so we figured I would need to begin an Ibuprofen regimen to keep it down until we saw what my affliction would do next. But boy, I felt like crap.

Saturday October 13th – Beijing

We were advised to check out of our hotel today. We had a whole day of touring but wouldn’t be returning and would be in fact be finishing our day on a night train to Xi’an. We packed an overnight bag with our toiletries and anything we’d need to survive an evening and a morning on a train and our luggage was gathered in the lobby of the hotel to be picked up by a luggage transport service. It would be send on ahead of us and we would not see the luggage again until we arrived at our hotel in Xi’an the next morning.

The first thing we did was head towards the extensive park that housed the Temple of Heaven, an extraordinary multicolored temple with 3 layers of circular roof lines held up in the interiors by massive red and gold pillars. This was where the emperor came once or twice a year to make sacrifices to the gods for a good harvest. Ordinary citizens were not allowed in the temple. The temple sits in a complex of bridges and vaults, and is really beautiful. There is a museum that illustrates the renovation of the temple and all the political notables world-wide that have been welcomed at the temple like Richard Nixon.

The doors were opened so you could peer into the temple and look at the interior but it wasn’t illuminated enough where you could actually make out what you were looking at. I found that same thing to be true at the Forbidden City. The people trying to get a look inside the historical structures would be 5 or 6 people deep or more and once you forced your way up front you really couldn’t make out what was inside because it was too dark. If I were running the show I would pull all the original stuff out, make copies of it. Put the originals in a museum, put the copies back in the sites and illuminate them so people could see what it actually looked like, without worrying about the lights damaging the originals. It really wasn’t worth battling the crowds to peer into these dark shrouded rooms where you could barely make out the inhabitants.

As fantastic as the temple was the most amazing thing about the park was how it was packed with locals all involved at various activities. When we first arrived at the temple we were greeted by a group of women doing hacky-sack with these objects that resembled oversized darts or badminton birdies; large feathered things that were lightly weighted on one end. They noticed us immediately when we entered the complex and started tossing the birdies to us good naturedly to get us involved in their fun. They also had them for sale. (I knew they weren’t doing it out of the goodness of their hearts!) And some of our most fervent shoppers availed themselves of several of these birdies.

But on this cool, foggy morning people were in the park doing this birdie hacky-sack game, doing Tai Chi in large groups, Singing traditional Mao songs as well as groups doing a sort of Peking Opera karaoke, people were teaching ballroom dancing to tape players playing salsa music, all of this was going on all at the same time. It was as if everyone came out of their homes on the weekends to be out in the park doing whatever it is they love to do, but as a group. We walked through the crowds from one activity to the next, one group singing, another doing a movement dance with paddles and balls with streamers, another singing to a radio, another doing group singing that you could purchase the sheet music for a few Yuen. It really was amazing, I have never seen anything like it. We got a few raindrops as we wandered through the throngs, but it never rained enough to worry about.

Our bus next took us to a Chinese herbal medicine clinic. Li told us that we could get a free foot massage if we wanted one. They were free she told us, you just were to tip the masseuses afterwards minimally, like 5 Yuan. I wasn’t sure about that although I love to have my feet massaged. The bus stopped on this busy business street and we all piled out and took a large elevator up to the 2nd floor in 2 batches where we were met by white coated women, looking very medical who greeted us and escorted us into this large room with oversized cushiony chairs. In front of each chair was a wooden bucket lined with plastic and filled with warm water and what looked like a tea bag of some sort of herb. We were instructed to remove our shoes and socks and soak our feet, which we all did.

It was lovely. It had been cold and drizzly out and to sit with our feet in warm water was soothing and comforting. An attendant even came in at one point and rewarmed our buckets with additional hot water.

Finally an English speaking herbal doctor entered the room and introduced himself. He had studied in the U.S. and had lived in a suburb of Seattle. While he gave an introduction to the philosophy of Chinese herbal medicine a group of students entered the room, parked themselves in front of each of us, pulled our feet from the buckets, toweled them off and started massaging our feet.

While these kids did a number on our feet this physician showed us charts of the human body and explained the main ideas. He showed us all the acupuncture points, and the energy zones and explained how a Chinese herbal doctor can diagnose what ails us by looking at our eyes, our tongues and listening to our pulse. If we wanted, he explained, a doctor would come join us in the room, examine us and give us a diagnosis. At which point we were joined by 4 or 5 doctors in white coats who went to each person with an interpreter and examined each person that was interested.

My doctor asked me if I was taking a medication for high blood pressure. I told him no. He asked me if was experiencing any joint pain, such as in the knees. I told him no. He then advised me that I had a propensity to develop high blood pressure and high sugar and suggested that Caterpillar Fungus would take care of me. I was advised that they could sell me a 2-month supply for $93 American. I declined. But oh, the foot massage was delicious.

People in the group were buying all this stuff like crazy. Not only were they pulling out their wallets and purses and buying this unimaginably expensive herbal stuff but they were buying the foot massage cream and the tea bags that our feet were marinating in. Even though this ended as a shopping opportunity its was great fun and actually very interesting.

When we got up and put our shoes back on we wandered through the front of the clinic and looked at huge ginseng roots for sale and peered through the glass cabinets at the packaged herbs all ready to go. My feet like I was walking on foam rubber. My step was indeed lighter.

We went to lunch. And then we were off to the Summer Palace. May, our Beijing guide talked all about the Ming and Qing dynasties. The Summer palace was the summer retreat of the royal family when the heat grew too stifling in Beijing. The royal family would be brought here via a day long excursion of boating on the canals and being carried in sedans. The entire grounds of the palace cover 716 acres most of which is this enormous lake. We entered through the East Palace gate and wound our way through the complex along the lake edge with a stop at Empress Cixi’s quarters. Again the interior was kept dark. We continued on to the Long corridor, a 728 meter long covered walkway decorated with 14,000 scenic paintings. The place was mobbed, as it was a Saturday. We stopped in at the Olympics shop which was housed on the palace grounds and people purchased hats and tee shirts. I bought a “Beijing 2008” tee shirt myself.

The summer palace was apparently built during earlier dynasties but didn’t exist in the design that it is now until the 18th centuries. It was demolished several times by the French and English and rebuilt. As May explained, it’s last remodel was done in 1902 by the Empress Cixi using money that was meant to refurbish the Chinese Navy. At the same time she also built this object referred to as the marble boat. This garish multi-level boat floating in the lake off of the Palace grounds designed to look like a boat made out of marble. It’s main function was to welcome foreign dignitaries. Michael and I both thought it was rather tacky.

We then stood in line and took a lavish boat, in the shape of a dragon across the lake to the other side of the grounds for our exit. As we crossed the lake you could see above a beautiful Buddhist temple up on the forested hill overlooking the temple grounds. As we crossed the lake a strong wind came up and suddenly it became very stormy.

Our next stop was a tea house for a tea ceremony demonstration. We climbed a flight of stairs and were immediately escorted into a huge complex of rooms containing many long tables. Our group was separated into two tables and a narrator and her assistant joined us at the tables and began explaining the tea ceremony and how tea is brewed in China. They had a supply of hot water at each table and a decorative basin that contained a bamboo liner that the clay tea pot sat in. As our young narrator in Chinese dress explained, her assistant would demonstrate by filling the pot with hot water to warm the pot and she poured hot water all over the exterior of the pot and then would put tea into the pot, pour in the water and almost immediately would then pour us a sample of the tea. It was a joy to watch her, they barely steeped the tea for any time at all and her movements were elegant. We were allowed to sample 4 types of tea. The one that I liked the most was the Oolong and ginseng. We also tried a Jasmine. They also demonstrated these flower teas where the brewing object was actually a dried flower which magically bloomed when the hot water was added. Not only did the blossom eventually open but then another flower emerged from the middle of the blossom and floated up to the top of the tea. You could drink the tea but then, if you brewed the tea in a decorative glass you could keep the flower in the water as a decoration for weeks. We had seen the movie Marie Antoinette with Kirsten Dunst and there was a scene in it where she shows her brother a gift from the Emperor of China and it was one of these flowered teas. After seeing that magic Michael was hot on getting himself a sample of this tea.

They also demonstrated these tea cups that magically changed graphic designs on the sides when filled with hot water. And the last item they showed us was “Pee Pee Boy”. Not unlike that fountain statue in Denmark of the kid peeing Pee Pee boy was a little recreation of a little boy peeing and you soak it in water and the clay soaks up the water and when used you pour hot water over the statue and the pressure causes the internal water to squirt out his little “Pee-Pee.” It was demonstrated to us and the attendant let Pee Pee boy pee pee all over everyone at the table. Much hilarity ensued.

After the tea ceremony demonstration was completed we were escorted into the Tea House’s shop where we were free to purchase tea. I think everybody bought something. We bought several different types of tea and three tea cups to give away as gifts. Each person who made a purchase of some amount got a Pee Pee Boy. After our purchase Li made one of the clerks give us several more. It was actually a delightful and fun experience. And after a long and tiring day the hot tea felt good, and it was interesting to taste the different types.

Our restaurant this night for dinner was situated in an alley off the street. It was such an odd location is felt almost like a speak-easy.

After dinner we headed off to the train station to catch our overnight train to Xi’an. When the bus came to its stop I looked around for the train station. We were in a pot-holed expanse crammed with buses and Chinese carrying bags containing belongings. I didn’t see anything that looked like a train station. Our escort took us acrossed the street into a building and we walked up and down stairways and through a maze of corridors and finally we entered what looked like a train station. The electronic sign was completely in Chinese. Michael and I marveled that if we were here on our own we would never have been able to make out where or what we were supposed to do.

There were Chinese around us carrying their belongings in everything from beat-up suitcases to huge bags of plastic and pillow-cases. We finally ended up in this room crammed with people standing and sitting. There was actually a café type sitting area off to the side but people had all the seats there jammed long ago. We wondered how long we would be standing in this mob until finally an announcement was made in Chinese and many people got up to go and many seats were vacated and we moved as a group to grab someplace to sit before someone else did. No sooner did many of us sit down and relax but Mr. Wu announced that it was time for us and we all grabbed our overnight bags and followed Wu and Li out to the train. Again we traipsed along behind through a maze of corridors and finally found ourselves at the platform along our train.

Li had already told us what compartment we were in (15-16-17 and 18 – Terry would be rooming with Michael, Li and I) and Mr Wu escorted us into our train car and we scouted out our compartment and threw our stuff into the top berths.

I actually love trains and was looking forward to our overnight journey. We were told that we had to be up as soon as it got light so we could see some of rural China, that we might get a view of farmers and their water buffalo’s. The train car seemed in fine shape. There were bathrooms at each end of each car but as usual we were advised to brush our teeth with bottled water, to definitely not try to drink any water that came out of the tap.

There was much excitement and chatter and laughter in the train car as everyone got settled. The four of us talked for several hours and Li was telling us the story of her neurotic, high maintenance Lhasa-Apso dog named Rocky. I was howling as she was telling us the story of how they bought him a raincoat with a hood and when she and George laughed at him when they put it on him he became indignant, bared his teeth and attempted to bite it off.

The train left on time and we all dozed off as the train clattered and rocked its way into the night.

Friday October 12th - Beijing

It was breakfast in the hotel this morning on the 6th floor.

Michael and I were up early and so wandered up to the 6th floor but it was dark and the workers were just starting to set up the morning breakfast. We did notice though that they had the steam tables all set up with food and the tops of each serving receptacle was standing open with its contents completely open to the air. I thought that the food certainly wasn’t going to stay hot exposed like that.

We wandered around outside waiting for them to get set up and then took the elevator back up.

I spilled my first cup of coffee which did not bode well for the rest of the day. Michael and I both noticed that the food was allcold. None of it was even trying to be warm. It was all room temperature or just plain cold, as we noticed the containers all sitting open earlier. Michael refused to eat anything that should be hot. I didn’t care. I ate tepid sausage and noodles.

We were later to learn from one of our traveling companions that they actually saw cockroaches on the sweet rolls. I’m glad I didn’t know that earlier, I ate several of them.

We hit the road again at 8:30 am with Li, Mr. Wu and our guide May Chen. The traffic heading out of Beijing was as bad as any city I’ve ever seen. The downtown skyscrapers as spectacular and impressive as New York. We were all amazed at how huge this city was. The traffic let up a little as soon as we got outside the city and May directed the bus to drive past the Olympic site so we could see the site under construction, but particularly the Bird’s Nest Stadium. Photographs of the stadium do not do it justice. It is just spectacular with its maze of strap-like wrapping holding it’s stadium shape together. In pictures it looks confused and messy but in person it is graceful and elegant. We also saw the building that would house the water events with its blue, membrane like outer covering and the athlete’s village.

We continued on out of town heading for the Ming tombs. The Ming tombs are as they say, the tombs of the 14 Emperors of the Ming dynasty, which are all buried in a 15 square mile valley, chosen for its Feng shui alignment. Not all of the tombs have been excavated and we actually only had time to visit one, the most impressive of all of them, the tomb of Yongle. This tomb consists of a series of pavilions situated in one long complex in a row, not unlike the structure of the Forbidden City, with the Spirit tower at the end of the pavilion. Yongle’s actual burial chamber is thought to be in this mound at the back of the pavilion area, directly behind the Spirit tower, but it’s excavation has never been attempted.

When you enter the Hall of Eminent Favor, the largest Ming style building on the campus you are greeted by a huge bronze statue of Yongle. Unfortunately, though impressive, the statue is modern and not archaeologically significant. The hall however has artifacts on display from the Ming tombs, including head-pieces and jewelry, and woven recreations of the decomposing textiles found in the tombs. This hall was also held up by the most impressive 43-foot cedar columns, original to the tomb.

I thought the tomb was only marginally interesting. I think the experience would have been much more interesting if you had an entire day to taxi about the entire valley and see the other excavations. You could see the other tombs by the stacked, curved roofed, buildings peeking up above the trees in the distance all around you. Apparently one of the burial chambers has actually been opened but we didn’t have time to visit any other parts of the valley.

As we wound our way back to the bus we were accosted by vendors selling cheap, Chinese style handbags and other cheap tourist souvenirs for the first time. We were soon to find out that this was only the beginning of the most annoying harassment. Although the women on the group seemed to find it highly amusing and usually had to be physically herded back on the bus so we could get moving again. One of our most fervent shoppers got on the bus from the Ming Tombs parking lot after purchasing a package of 10 handbags. There was much merriment and comparing of goods and bartering techniques after each of these events.

We got moving again and went and had lunch. After lunch we visited a cloisonné factory to see how this art form was created. I always wondered how cloisonné was created. We watched as artisans, following a blueprint attached thin wires of copper onto ceramic objects, normally vases. These wired vases were then passed onto painters who then applied different colors of enamel within the wire forms. Once the first layer of paint was applied the vessel was fired. Once cooled another layer of multi-colors were applied again and the firing was repeated and this was continued until the proper effect was achieved. It seemed that the most fine and expensive pieces were completely smooth. The paint application and firing was repeated until the enamel met the top edge of the wire so that no difference could be felt between the paint and the wire separating the enamel colors. There were also pieces in the factory store where it was obvious that the firing was not done as completely for you could feel the edges of the wire, the painting not completed up to the wire edge. These pieces were not as delicate and lovely as the others, they had a more rough and primitive feel and look to them. And they were also less expensive.

Michael and I quickly tired of the crowds in the shop and went and stood outside watching the tourist buses jamming the parking lot.

Eventually our group assembled and we continued on our bus towards the Great Wall of China.

There are several gateways to the wall, some more developed than others. We headed towards the easiest and most accessible entrance to the wall at Badaling. Our guides were marveling that we actually had clear skies and sun. Though once we arrived at Badaling it was cool and the air was quite brisk. We were advised to carry jackets with us. There were thousands of tour buses and zillions of people and vendors screaming at you to buy tee shirts and post cards and hats and books.

The wall is completely rebuilt and it curls about the hillsides like a snake as far as you can see. It was elegant the way it curled along the mountains like the ridgeback of a dragon, with it’s turrets and ramparts. And the panorama is spectacular the further you go. Parts of the walkway within the wall is extremely steep. Michael and I took the path to the right and marched with throngs of tourists for about 40 minutes. Michael got winded and I continued up the wall for another 15 to 20 minutes before I turned back. And even though I went fairly far I could still see people far down the wall, way off in the distance.

The way back was all downhill and I found my way back to the entry area in 10 minutes. At intervals there were large guard post towers along the wall where you could picture guards armed with bow and arrow, ready to signal the next visible guard tower with smoke should they notice an attack, but now these platforms were usurped as tourist areas where you could get your picture taken dressed up in Chinese costume, and buy souvenirs and post cards. There was even a roller coaster type carnival ride on tracks that you could ride on at one point that descended the hill next to the wall. I couldn’t believe it.

We had dinner and returned to our hotel.

Thursday October 11th – Beijing

I died the moment my head hit the pillow at 7:30 pm, once we got back from dinner.

Consequently I woke up at 12:30 am, then at 3:30 am, and then every hour after that. I made myself doze off until 5:30 am. Breakfast was at 6:30 am on floor 6. Our bus was scheduled to leave at 8:30 am.

We again wandered the streets a little, Third Ring Rd before breakfast in the bracing cold and watched people on bicycles and buses and on foot on their way to work. We wandered into an apartment complex with their own guarded entrance behind our hotel and watched people walking their dogs. One women came out with her little grey whippet wearing a little sweater and they both jogged by, the dog following her almost step by step.

Breakfast was another nice buffet of American and Asian dishes, eggs, bacons, humbow, kimchee and delicious coffee. We found the coffee to be uniformly good throughout the trip.

Today our schedule started with Tian’an Men Square and the Forbidden City apparently situated in the very center of the city. We’re moving at rush hour and the rush hour traffic is as bad as I’ve ever seen. However once we got through our exit off of Third Ring we moved fairly swiftly.

Tian’an Men was mobbed. Apparently there had been a major Chinese holiday celebration in the beginning of the month so there was still remnants, tinsel garlands, a huge botanical display. We decided the mobs were no different than those who visit the National monuments in D.C. There was also a meeting of the Communist Party going on so there was a huge military and police presence.

I thought the square would be more wide open. I kept waiting for us to actually enter the square but our guide told us that we were already in the square. I remember the photos of those protesters and the tanks but there are buildings all over the square, so there really aren’t large open spaces. The mausoleum of Mao sits there with a wax effigy of the chairman. The actual body is buried down below out of sight.

Also in the square is the Great Hall of the People, The Qian Men; the remainder of the wall that formerly encircled the whole city, and the Monument to the People’s Heroes.

Opposite the square is the Forbidden City, that iconic Chinese façade with the Chairman Mao looking down at the world.

A busy boulevard sits directly in front of the Forbidden City with an underground underpass. Any films that I’ve ever seen of that façade had to have been filmed with the boulevard closed down because there isn’t any open space in front of it. There is just typical Beijing traffic honking and speeding along the entrance to the Forbidden City.

It is impossible to verbally describe the immensity of the Forbidden City. You pass through 3 enormous walled open areas before you actually enter the City. In ancient times there were apparently 9; 9 being the number of the emperor. There are also 9999 rooms in the City. After touring through it you could see how it would be possible to live here and never come into contact with many of its tenants.

I was reminded of the movie, The Last Emperor and would love to see it again to be shown how all the areas were used in Imperial times and the rituals.

Each time you passed through another wall you were amazed by the elaborate structure and carvings and the huge open space separating one walled entrance from another.

We saw the Emperor’s throne and the palace of one of the Empresses and the garden and house where the Englishman taught English to the young Emperor Poo-Yi. The Imperial Garden had these rough, uneven rock formations all through it. It wasn’t anything like any garden in the western sense. They looked like they had more to do with the sea than a garden on land. Apparently one of the emperors liked these rocks and had them brought in and made a part of the garden. We were to see these again and again in our tours.

After the Forbidden City we caught back up with our bus on the other side, having passed right through the middle of the City and we took off for lunch.

Our lunch restaurant was the previous residence of some Imperial personage. The food again was Chinese, Sichuan served in family fashion. The entry-way of the house/restaurant reminded us of the scene at the Inn in Crouching Tiger-Hidden Dragon, with its wood carvings and balcony.

Next we were transported a short distance to an older party of the Beijing to visit a Hutong. Now a hutong is technically a narrow alleyway created by the walls of courtyard houses. This old style of neighborhood used to be more prevalent in Beijing but are now being torn down and replaced with modern buildings. They were walled homes with middle courtyards that resulted in these thin alleyways that not even cars could drive through.

We were pulled in rickshaws through these narrow hutong alleys and then stopped to visit an actual family living in one. The rickshaws were pulled by bicycles and there appeared to be hundreds of them lining the streets when we arrived at the Hutong entrance. These rickshaw drivers were run by different companies, recognizable by the style of the fabric of the canopy. Ours was burgundy with an Imperial yellow fringe.

When we pulled up into the entrance to this hutong a group of probably twenty or so schoolgirls in school uniforms were already in place in their rickshaws and as the rickshaws took off from position one by one the girls all started to scream and wave. It was really cute.

Though Michael and I were afraid that this was going to turn out to be a little too touristy it actually tuned out to be quite entertaining with a stop at a lovely lake. The pollution was so thick as we peered across the foggy lake and I realized that I had been breathing and smelling a burning air since we hit town. We were also approached for the first time by street vendors selling black market watches and fake North Face jackets. Li’s husband George had told us a story of someone purchasing one of these North Face knockoffs in China and once home attempted to return it because it wasn’t the right size and North Face knew right away that it was a fake and confiscated the jacket.

The alleys of the hutong were non-stop caravans of rickshaws speeding by on both sides, calling to one another, as if heckling one another as they passed. It did have a Disney-ish quality to it; we might have just as easily have been on tracks.

We stopped at this family hutong with a small courtyard and we were invited into a living area where a little Chinese lady invited us in to sit. She then welcomed her “American friends”, speaking through our guide as her interpreter, though Li helped out at times as well.

She had several birds, like Myna’s in a cage hanging in the courtyard, and an aquarium with fish and another tank full of turtles. She told us that she had inherited the place from her parents and would leave it to her children but they wanted none of it, preferring instead to live in the city, in modern apartment buildings. She had no bathroom facilities but used a chamber pot which they could dump at a facility a block or so away. She could also walk down the street to a public toilet if she wanted. The place wasn’t fancy, but certainly wasn’t terrible. One wall separating the living area from the kitchen had an Asian style filigree work on the doors. Our tour guide had been telling us about the Chinese pearl industry and producing face cream out of pearls, so one of the women in our group asked the lady if she used pearl cream. Her response was that no, she used a tub of face cream that usually lasted her for a whole year. Everyone laughed. The lady was really cute. When we asked her how often she had tours into her home she responded that this was the 4th tour that day alone. We took a walk through the rest of her home which stretched in a horse-shoe shape following the courtyard and it was pretty meager by our standards. She posed for photographs graciously as we left. She was really cute but definitely old-school, in a Mao kind of way.

We then got back on the bus and headed for a freshwater pearl factory. I thought we were going to the Temple of Heaven but this pearl factory turned out to be the bulk of our afternoon. A man gave us a little pep talk about the way that freshwater pearls are created. He told us that they do not get the oysters to create pearls by injuring them with foreign objects like sand or glass but that they inject the oysters with tiny pieces of oyster meat, which is much less injurious to the oyster. I also noticed that these oysters were larger than oysters I was used to. These almost looked like big clams. He opened one up as an example and there must have been 20 to 30 tiny pearls inside.

We looked at some of the jewelry and let one of the clerks smear a sample of pearl crème on my hand. It was really softening but smelled really funky. After 15 minutes Michael and I went and sat outside.

What was interesting was the volume of staff in this place. We were the only ones in there and their staff to guest ratio was easily 1 to 2. And we were in there well after 5pm, it appeared that they were keeping the place open for us. And well they should have, it seemed that every woman in our group purchased a pearl necklace. After everyone in our group had finally wandered out of the place we saw the staff all leave the place together and head off into a building behind the store. We were told that the girls all work on commission and they live in dormitories right there on the pearl factory grounds.

Finally it was dinner-time and instead of taking our bus to dinner our guide May, decided to take us to our dinner restaurant on the Beijing subway as a way to introduce us to their new mass transportation system. She was very proud of the amount of work that China was doing to Beijing getting ready for the Olympics. Since the bulk of our group was from Oregon all our guides held green Oregon flags as our signal to follow as we trouped around as a group.

We followed May down into the subway and they purchased tickets for us. She told us that we had to be careful and follow her or we would get lost. We would take one subway one stop, get off and transfer to another subway. The first line was beautiful and obviously part of the new system, it was clean and new and fast. We then transferred to an older line and the difference was very obvious. It wasn’t unclean, just older. It was a very interesting thing to do and I appreciate getting our amongst the people. But it didn’t seem much different from taking the subway in New York. Lots of people all going home from work and elsewhere. They were more curious as to why May was holding a green Oregon flag than about us Anglos.

We then got off and walked to a Howard Johnson Hotel where we were having dinner. All our lunches and dinners were Chinese food served family style. Li got angry because she didn’t think that the serving dishes were large enough for a table of ten and got into a Chinese arguing match with the manager. But they did surprise Tuck, one of the women in our group with a birthday cake, and sang Happy Birthday to her. Desserts in China are fruit oriented and not as sweet as their American counterparts. This was only the second time, and the last time that we saw anything that resembled an American Dessert. It was fresh fruit from here on out.

By the time dinner was done our bus had met us and drove us back to the hotel, where we collapsed after a full day of touring.