China (1998)
Journey to the Middle Kingdom . . . and Beyond
To get ready for our trip to China, Valerie and I must have read a dozen books on China and watched a similar number of movies and videos. I even took a course at the local community college of the history of China. But nothing can really prepare you for the impact of the sights, sounds and experiences of an actual visit to that fascinating country. With a population that makes up over one-fifth of the world’s population, a land mass that is larger than that of the U.S. and a recorded history that goes back almost four thousand years, China is truly an overwhelming experience and one which will take us a long time to digest and absorb.
Terra Cotta Warriors Chairman Mao Great Wall of China
Our four week itinerary took us from Beijing to Xi’an, down the Yangtze River from Chungking to Wuhan, on to Shanghai, Guilin and Hong Kong (See Map) and ended with a final week in Vietnam. Our traveling companions were Joe and Jane Warren, friends from White Bear Lake and former 3Mers with whom we’d sailed in Greece the previous year. We were joined for the China portion by Mike and Jewel Flajole, old friends of the Warrens from Michigan.
We had arranged for all our hotel accommodations and air flights beforehand as well as for local guides and transportation in each city. This independent travel gave us great flexibility in selecting our activities and tailoring our itineraries in each location. All of our arrangements proved to be excellent. Our hotels were all first class and comparable to some of the best hotels in the U.S. and Europe. Our domestic airline flights were efficient, on time and served by a number of new and very modern airports. Our local transportation was in comfortable, 12-15 passenger vans for just the six of us and our guides were all pleasant and intelligent young people with good English language skills. The latter is important since the Chinese language with its 50,000 characters and subtle tonalities is daunting to Western ears and made anything beyond a few, rudimentary attempts to say a few words is all but impossible.
We did find our guides and other Chinese contacts very open and willing to talk about just about anything including such sensitive topics as Mao Tze-tung, the Cultural Revolution, the one child-one family law and even the recent Tiananmen Square massacre. Having suffered through a century of wars and turmoil, most of the Chinese people we met seem to be less interested in politics and much more interested in pursuing their own individual goals for economic improvement and a better life. Although they acknowledged the greater individual freedom in the West, it doesn’t seem to be an immediate issue with the people we met, who are more focused on exploiting their new-found, economic freedoms and maybe acquiring further education, a bigger apartment and a motor bike or car someday. There also seemed to be a reservoir of good will, if not admiration, for the American people, which may be a carry over from our mutual friendship during the second World War.
The Chinese people also have a strong sense of national pride. Since early recorded history, the Chinese have referred to their country as the Middle Kingdom implying China’s place at the center of the universe. That same Middle Kingdom mentality is still apparent today in both private conversation and national policy. (And I always thought that White Bear Lake was the center of the universe !?!)
Although we didn’t go still expecting to find the land of rickshaws, coolies, junks and sampans of the China of the past, we were, nevertheless, surprised by the modern buildings, hotels, highways and infrastructure of the cities we visited. They’ve come a long way since the People’s Republic was formed 1949 but they still have a long way to go.
Beijing. Our fourteen hour flight took us from Detroit up over the Arctic Circle to Beijing. Crossing the International Date line enroute, we skipped over most of the day of October 5th , which happens to be Val’s birthday, giving rise to her claim that she should not have to add a year to her age this year. We celebrated her birthday on arrival with a walk to nearby Tiananamen Square in the moonlight and with some traditional Chinese holiday moon cakes in lieu of a birthday cake.
Beijing is a city of eleven million people and three million bicycles and the first sensation is one of an unending stream of both on the city streets. Beijing has been the capital city of China, with a few minor interruptions, for over seven hundred years. It’s centerpiece is the Forbidden City, built in 1421 and residence to twenty four Chinese emperors over the last five hundred years . Located in the heart of Beijing, this splendid complex has close to 10,000 rooms and is surrounded by thirty foot wall and moat around its entire four mile periphery. Up until the forced abdication of the Last Emperor, Pu Yi, in 1912, no ordinary citizens were allowed inside the walls. Other imperial sites in Beijing we visited included the Temple of Heaven, the Summer Palace and the Ming Tombs. .all magnificent.
Forbidden City Giant Panda
The Great Wall of China, of course, is a highlight of any visit to Beijing and is located two hours outside the city. We’ve all heard about the Great Wall all of our lives but nothing quite prepares you for that first view. They’re right . . it really is a great wall!! First begun in the Fifth Century B.C., construction of the wall was continued over the next thousand years. The only man-made object visible from space, the Great Wall now extends for almost four thousand miles across China. From 25 to 35 feet in height and wide enough for the defending armies to march ten abreast along the top between the watch towers, the wall was constructed to keep the barbarian hordes from invading China from the North. It appears to be doing its job. We saw few, if any, barbarians,
Several other activities which capped our stay in Beijing were a visit to the zoo to see the Giant Pandas, a night at the famed Beijing Opera and two wonderful dinners: a Beijing Duck dinner and a special dinner in a private home to sample some of the imperial dishes served to the emperors in the Forbidden City.
Xi’an. Located 600 miles west of Beijing, Xi’an is the ancient capital of China and served for over a thousand years as the capital city for eleven imperial dynasties. In it’s time, it was once the largest city in the world and is now a primary tourist destination..
Touristic interest in Xi’an was renewed in 1974 when local farmers, who were digging a well in their fields, discovered an army of terra cotta warriors buried for over twenty two hundred years, in what has turned out to be one of the most significant archeological finds of this century. Ordered built by the First Emperor, Qin Shihuang Di, in 246 B.C., this army of over 6,000, life-sized terra cotta figures, each different one from another, stand in silent battle formation ready to defend the Emperor’s nearby tomb against all intruders. Although there is still further excavation work to be done, most of the figures have been restored and are relocated in the pits where they were discovered sheltered by a large roof in a museum-like setting. We purchased a replica of one of the warriors to be shipped back to Minnesota, where we hope to have it guarding our home into future centuries.
Yangtze River Cruise. We flew from Xi’an to Chungking, where we boarded the Victoria III for a five day, four night cruise down the Yangtze River. The Yangtze River is, of course, the longest river in China (the third longest in the world), home to over 300 million people and the cradle of Chinese civilization. Our ship took us from Chungking (the WWII capital of China) to Wuhan about 700 miles downstream.
Yangtze Cruise Ship for Tourists Yangtze Cruise Ship for Locals
Our ship was a very comfortable, 3,000 ton cruise ship which could accommodate 150 passengers , although there were only about a hundred on our sailing due to cancellations resulting from the recent floods. Although we saw considerable evidence of the flooding (which took over 2,000 lives this summer), our cruise was largely unaffected.
The highlight of the cruise is the 120 mile stretch through the Three Gorges, where the river rushes through narrow gorges lined with steep cliffs in some of the most beautiful scenery in China. This trip is made even more dramatic by the knowledge that, once the new Three Gorges dam is completed, most of this unique scenic splendor will disappear forever.
We had a chance to go ashore at the site of the new dam already five years into construction. The world’s largest construction project, the dam will be 600 feet high, 1 1/4 miles wide and could cost upwards of seventy five billion dollars. The projected benefits of the dam when finally complete in 2009 will be flood control, hydroelectric power generation (15% of the national demand), increased irrigation and improved inland marine shipping. The costs, though, are great: two million people displaced, 1,500 cities, towns and villages submerged and the loss of many sites of historic and archeological interest. Although still a very controversial proposal, it is pretty obvious after a visit to the construction site that there’s no stopping it now and all the world can do now is to wish them success with this monumental undertaking.
We disembarked in Wuhan where we caught a short flight to Shanghai the next day. Our brief look around Wuhan included two stops of interest: one to Mao’s private home there not yet open to the general public and another to a small museum housing 1,800 magnificent bronze artifacts recently discovered in the tomb of a minor warlord dating back to 433 B.C. and including a set of 64 bronze bells, which were played for us in a private concert. It makes you wonder how many other treasures there are in China yet unearthed and waiting for discovery or, worse yet, that will be lost forever under the backwaters of the Three Gorges Dam.
Shanghai. A city of only middling importance at the beginning of this century, Shanghai is now China’s largest and fastest growing city with a population of more than of thirteen million people. It’s growth in the last decade has been particularly spectacular from a city with only twelve skyscrapers in the 80’s to more than a hundred today and with a new one going up every day. The river cruise along the harbor featured some of the older pre-war buildings that gave Shanghai the name " Paris of the East" but, for the most part, that old charm seems to have been sacrificed to the priorities of commercial growth.
We took a day trip to Suzhou, a larger and more important city that Shanghai a hundred years ago but now primarily a tourist destination famed for its canals, beautiful gardens and silk factories. We had visited a number of craftsmen’s shops (jade, cloisonné, lacquerware, etc.) in different cities, but the visit to the silk factory, where we could watch the process from silk worms to cocoons to finished silk in step-by-step detail, was our favorite. A closely guarded secret for over a thousand years, knowledge of the silk making process could mean death to any outsider who discovered it. Fortunately they allowed us to leave with our heads . . . not to mention several silk shirts, blouses, ties and quilts.
Guilin. A relatively small city in southern China, Guilin has been only open to tourists in past twenty years and features the unique, limestone mountain formations which have inspired Chinese poets and painters through the centuries. A five hour boat trip up the Li River, which threads its way through the towering sugar loaf mountains, allowed us to see and photograph this amazing scenic wonder from every perspective.
Li River Cormorant Fisherman
At night we were witness to a unique fishing experience featuring the Li River fishermen and their cormorant birds, who are trained to dive under the surface of the water to catch fish and then disgorge them in a basket for their masters. They are prevented from swallowing the fish by a small elastic band around their necks. The birds seem to enjoy the fishing even though they are denied their dinners and when fully trained they are valuable helpers and, we were told, can be worth more than a water buffalo.
Hong Kong. . My first visit to Hong Kong was back in my Navy days in the late 50’s and Val and I had been there again in 1983 so we were interested to see if the recent handover of the city to mainland China had any noticeable effect on the city. On the surface, it didn’t. The people of Hong Kong still have their own passports, currency and local government as they evolve into the new "two systems, one China" era. Home to over five million people, Hong Kong is still one of the most beautiful harbors in the world and dinner with friends one evening on Victoria Peak, the highest point on the island, looking down on the skyscrapers below us simply confirmed it
Vietnam. We were asked a several times before we left home why we had included Vietnam in our itinerary. Apart from the general excitement of visiting any new place for the first time, we’d heard a lot about the beauty of the country and wanted to see it before it becomes a mass tourist destination . . . and perhaps, like a lot of Americans, we had some lingering questions about the Vietnam war (they call it the American war there) of twenty five years ago. Plus, it was just a short flight away from Hong Kong. (See Map).
Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) Our week in Vietnam was divided equally between Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi . . each interesting cities in their own right. Formerly known as Saigon, Ho Chi Minh City is the bustling commercial capital of the country with a population of four million people, two million bicycles, one million motor scooters and 200 thousand cars and so, like Beijing, any attempt to cross the street was an adventure. The French influence is still present in many of the old buildings along the tree lined boulevards. The American embassy, from which the last Americans were evacuated by helicopter, has been torn down, but the presidential palace, recalling the 1975 television images of enemy tanks crashing through its wrought iron gates signaling the victory of the north over the south, is still there (and now called Reunification Palace).
Vietnamese Children Vietnamese Farmer
Even more than the cities, we enjoyed our excursions into the picturesque Vietnamese countryside where we could see and photograph the rural people working in their rice fields and living their lives. One side trip took us to the Cu Chi tunnels twenty miles outside of Saigon used by the Viet Cong during the French and then the American war to move people and supplies undetected. The tunnel network extended for more than 120 miles and consisted of hand dug tunnels five feet high, two feet wide and from ten to thirty feet below the surface. Despite the best efforts of the American and South Vietnamese troops, they were never able to shut down the use of these tunnels. After a half hour or so of crawling through a few of these tunnels, we could get a sense of the dedication and courage of these Vietnamese fighters which eventually led to their victory. A second day trip took us to the Mekong Delta, where we took a leisurely boat cruise along the Delta, a peaceful and scenic ride today but the scene of some fierce fighting twenty five years ago.
Hanoi. We found the capital city of Hanoi to be even more charming than Saigon with its French colonial influence, new government buildings and city lakes. We stayed in the venerable, old Metropole Hotel, which itself evoked memories of the French colonial days. We saw the infamous Hanoi Hilton, where may American pilots were held prisoner during the war, and paid a visit to the War Museum . . . neither very pleasant experiences but certainly thought provoking. Perhaps the most fun, though, was a cyclo (or pedicab) ride through the old city where we could get a sense of the everyday life and commerce of the local citizenry as played out on the crowded city streets.
Pedicab Ride Hanoi Street Scene
We also took a day trip into the Hanoi countryside to the ancient capital of Hoa Lu, located along a gently flowing river nestled into in a beautiful mountain valley, where we spent an enjoyable afternoon boating through the mountain scenery on a bamboo sampan polled along by two charming, young Vietnamese women.
Sampan Cruise Our Crew
We were pleasantly surprised in all our contacts with the Vietnamese people to find that they seem to have put the war behind them and are very warm and welcoming to American visitors . . . and, as we drifted along in our sampan in this idyllic setting, it was very hard to believe all that had transpired in the beautiful country a generation ago.
If we had had any doubts about visiting Vietnam before we left, they were totally eliminated by this visit We were very happy that we had gone and would recommend it highly to anyone.
I might mention in closing that both Val and I celebrated our birthdays in China. In deference to my sense of chivalry, I won’t mention our ages (since Val is thirteen days older than I am) but I will say that I was able to find and bring along a copy of the Beetle’s old song, which goes: "When I get older, losing my hair, . . will you still love me, will you still need me . . . When I’m Sixty-Four.?" I guess we finally have our answer now. . . but there was nothing like this fantastic trip together to China and Vietnam to reaffirm it for another year.
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