Zhangjiajie

Zhangjiaje (ZJJ for short) is a special, magical place.  Located in southwestern China in Hunan province it is far off the beaten path for Western tourists.  Though there are many internal Chinese visitors, we were often the only Westerners in sight.  Here, again, we were part of the attraction with many people wanting Kyle's picture (and a few even wanting us).

Downtown ZJJ is booming.  Our hotel the Qinhe Jinjiang, is practically brand new.  The rooms were fantastic.  And the place was only 1/3rd full.  One of the things we saw throughout China was the burgeoning effects of the construction bubble.  Much of the area is overbuilt and if we had to guess we'll see it burst in someway or another.

Another thing we experienced in ZJJ was Chinese exceptionalism (something we'd seen elsewhere already).  Here in ZJJ everything was the "biggest" or "best" or "oldest."  At one point, we were shown a natural arch bridge that had developed over time and told, it was the oldest in the world -- though how anyone would know that (and how it could be older than the ones in Zion) nobody every said.  Sometimes this exceptionalism was cute -- but sometimes it was kind of off putting.

On the other hand, the topography in ZJJ was simply awesome in the old sense of the word -- inspiring us to be full of awe.  We spend two days wandering around the Chinese national park that has stunning karst topography.  Tall spires of rock, all crowned and covered with trees.  Plateaus that looked the same.  If you can imagine the Grand Canyon, and then cover it all with vegetation you get some idea of what it looks like.

Or, you can just go see the movie Avatar.  Apparently, the Discovery channel did some filming in ZJJ and James Cameron saw it, loved it, and took it for his movie (suitably modified with computer graphic effects, of course).  But the floating mountain of the movie is a real place -- it doesn't float, of course, but it looks like it might.To reach the area (known as Yuanjijie) we took a 300m tall glass elevator to the top of the plateau  -- the top was crowded with tourists, but serene.

The third day in ZJJ took us in a different direction to Tianmen Mountain -- another plateau with a huge hole that had been worn through it -- called the Gates of Heaven.  To reach the top of this one, we did take the longest (8 km) cable car in the world.  Kyle walked along the edge on a glass platform and then we too 99 hairpin turns up to the bottom of the Gates.  Kyle and Paul climbed 999 steps up to the mouth of the gate itself (yes, 9 is a magical number for the Chinese).  Along the way Paul shared his water with an elderly Chinese man who was struggling up -- they shared mutual near heart attacks without a common word between them, but the looks conveyed everything.  :-) Over all it was a real adrenaline drain for us -- too many heights and too steep.  By the time we were done we were totally drained and jaded.

Two other highlights of ZJJ deserve mention.  The first is that we went swimming at the pool at the hotel.  Not normally a notable experience but this pool was NOT heated.  Now we know what the people who got off the Titanic felt like.

The other was the food.  Hunan is known for its very unusual and spicy food and it did not disappoint.  We sampled smoked pork; spicy hot beef with chilies and plenty of other novel food items.

After the relative quite of ZJJ, we left the airport (very small -- a new one with jetways is planned) and headed for the big city, Shanghai.

Xian

We arrived in Xian by bullet train and went downtown to our hotel in the "Old City" center.  Unfortunately, "Old City" is a bit of a misnomer.  Though the city walls still stand, we would estimate that 80% of the construction inside the walls is new construction.  About the only difference between the old city and the new city outside the walls is a height restriction in old town.   And there is lots of construction in Xian -- it's a "small" city in China with "only" 9 million people.

The first evening we went wandering out to dinner without a guide.  The experience itself was amusing as Katy went from person to person asking (in her limited Mandarin) "excuse me please, may I ask, do you speak English?"  The extent of English speaking was very minimal -- almost the only folks who had any English were the younger generation -- and most of them have learned by reading and did not speak much at all.

Eventually, we wound up at what may well be the best dumpling restaurant in the world -- De Fa Chang.  It was hard to find but well worth the effort.  The dough was light and airy; the fillings were varied and tasty.  Perhaps most amusingly, the pastries were often shaped in a way that conveyed the contents -- so the duck dumplings had a duck shape, for example.

Our first full day in Xian began with a trip to the top of the city walls.  The view was quite nice and we had a great time taking a short bike ride, 1/4 way around the wall.  This was also the first time that we got accosted for pictures by Chinese tourists.  Kind of neat.

After the wall, we went to the Shananxi Provincial Museum which is, honestly, one of the better museums we've been in.  Devoted to the Silk Road, we saw a visual history of exploration, travel and commerce that was fascinating.  For lunch, we went to a very local Muslim Chinese restaurant where no English was spoken but the food was spicy hot and interesting.    The afternoon was spent at two of the "big" sights in Xian -- the old Bell Tower and the Great Mosque.  The locals say that Muslims have been in Xian since the 700s AD, but historians think it was likely a bit later.

Dinner was particularly interesting.  Once again, we went wandering to find a local Xian restaurant that the guide books had recommended.  We found it and sat down.  As recommended we ordered one of the Xian specialties -- a soup of some sort.  A short while later several round pita-like pieces of bread were put on our table.  Paul started to think about eating them immediately, when a kind lady sitting next to us (who spoke a smattering of English) made it clear we should not -- the bread was to be broken up into tiny pieces by hand, by us and then it was whisked away to be added to the soup to thicken it.  It was delicious.

Day two brought a highlight -- the Terra Cotta warriors.  [An aside -- on the way out to the site, we passed a coal fired electric generation plant with a line up of more than 30 coal trucks waiting to get in and make deliveries.  We understood better why there was so much pollution.]

The warriors themselves live up to their billing.  The field in which they are buried is quite large and the number of them rather overwhelming.   It makes you wonder at how people try to cheat death -- and in some ways the effort here (from roughly 200 BC!) was quite reminiscent of  the pyramids.  We were overwhelmed by the grandeur of the place (and also by the heat inside the un-airconditioned facility).  One amusing note -- at one point Kyle dropped his water bottle over the side into the pit where the warriors are.  Thankfully, it hung up on a ledge and didn't break one of the warriors.  Overall, however, the views were simply amazing and we lingered for several hours, before getting back in the car and heading to the Xian airport for our flight to Zhangjiajie.

Beijing

Our trip began with something unusual.  Instead of flying West from Dulles to Beijing (mostly over the pole) we flew east over the pole to take advantage of the tailwinds.  So, in effect, this trip was a round-the-world flight (we came home heading East to San Francisco and DC).  That's something we'd never done before.

And oh my what a long flight.  Lose a day and arrive totally wiped out, followed by a long 1 hour trip into town from the Beijing airport.  Fortunately, we had a wonderful hotel -- the Red Wall Garden.  Right in the heart of Beijing near the Forbidden City, this was a walled "hutong" hotel with a central garden with a fish pond to sit in and relax and a comfortable duplex room for the three of us. 

We walked out that evening into one of the first restarants we saw -- with a menu that had no English on it only pictures and, more remarkably, no bathroom.  If you had to go ... just hold it.

The next day started bright and early with a trip to Tienamin Square and the Forbidden City.  Tienamin was enormous and (as we noted in an early post) somewhat foreboding.  The Forbidden City was quite a lot of fun -- beautiful architecture.  One of the interesting things was learning something of the symbolism of the buildings.  For instance the number of animals on the corners of each roof signified the importance of the building -- the more the merrier.  Likewise, the two lions guarding the the City were male and female -- distinguishable because one of them held a globe while the other held a cub.  This is something Kyle noticed before either of us.  Oddly enough, however, the remaining treasures (Chang Kai Shek took most of them to Taiwan) were not terribly well preserved.

One of the more remarkable things we saw was a small family house (a "hutong" -- walled garden) near the center of the city.  We took a rickshaw ride to get there (no cars allowed) and were shocked to hear that the going price for these was $5000/square meter!  The owners were, in fact, multimillionaries.    And the first day ended with an amazing Kung Fu show -- the master broke three metal bars on his head as the climax of the event.

Day 2 saw a trip to the Wall.  As we said it was truly GREAT.  Wide enough to drive a car on at the top and 1000 miles long more or less.  You could see its grandeur and scale even in the small sample of what we walked.  Kyle climbed one of the taller/steeper pieces while we waited for him.   We'd write more, but in truth words don't do the scope and scale of it justice.  On the way home we stopped to wander in a small art community that looked very much like any similar one in Santa Fe.  Lots of nouveau stuff that was a bit out there - and totally surprising for an authoritarian country.

Our last day in Beijing started with a trip to the Heavenly Palace and local park.  As we said, the park was teeming with people in the early morning.  Mostly older folks, all of whom were out with friends.  Some were doing Tai Chi; others ball room dancing.  There was music being played; an opera singer singing; Mai Jhong and water calligraphy.  It was busy and vibrant early in the morning and full of life.  If we were old in Beijing, that's where we would go.  Altogether a total hoot.

Then it was off to Xian.  We took the bullet train there -- a 6 hour journey with top speeds of 200 mph.  The ride was smooth as silk as it ran on an elevated rail line.  Obviously the construction was fantastic -- but as we learned it was also done by taking the right of way from the locals without any compensation (or environmental impact assessment).  As we travelled we saw construction everywhere --- literally 100s of new buildings going up.  There is clearly a boom going on -- but the scope and scale made us wonder if it might also be a bubble waiting to burst.  Only time will tell.

China -- The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Well, we are back from 11 days in China with grandson Kyle.
It was a great time and we'll be blogging some of the details over the next few days (to make up for not being online in China while we were gone).  For now, though, here are some highlights:

The Good:  Lots of China was very good -- both in expected ways and in surprising ways.  We enjoyed the trip probably more than we expected to:

--Sometimes long-anticipated sights disappoint.  Not in China.  The Great Wall is really, really GREAT.  And the Terra Cotta warriors and Forbidden City both lived up to expectations.

--We had a wonderful, pleasant surprise in Zhangjiajie, the mountain area in SW China where the background for the movie Avatar comes from.  It was a delightful place with almost no foreigners, but lots of internal tourists from China.

-- One unexpected pleasure (or problem, depending on your perspective) of going to Zhangjiajie (and also Xian, where the Terra Cotta warriors were) is that we were so far off the beaten path for Westerners, that =we= actually became an attraction.  People wanted our photos (especially of Kyle) and one guy even came up and started running his hands through Kyle's hair.

--The food was either very bad (like bad US Chinese food) or, for the most part, very very good.  We had lots of interesting new things (smoked pork in Zhangjiejie and seaweed soup) as well as some of the best of familiar things (if you go to Xian get the steamed dumplings at DeFaChang!).

--We loved the parks -- especially the Heavenly Palace park in Beijing, where the mornings would find all sorts of people enjoying themselves with early morning exercise.

--The Bund at night in Shanghai is a must!

The Bad -- Not all of China was top quality.  Some lowlights:

-- The weather (especially in Shanghai) was pretty bad (up to 100)!

-- The pollution (especially in Beijing) was also pretty oppressive.

-- Public toilets -- yuck!

-- Traffic.  China is teeming with people and that means that it is teeming with cars too.  On one trip in Shanghai it was so bad that our car overheated and we had to get out of the care and head for the Shanghai Metro, which was, thankfully, quite easy to navigate.

-- Chinese exceptionalism.  It isn't all bad, but apparently, from the Chinese perspective the best, biggest, fastest and smartest everything is in China.  It's a pretty insular place.

The Ugly -- For the most part, we did not see the ugly side of China.  Indeed we saw alot less of it than we had expected too.  But when one person told us of how his family had lost their farm without compensation, we saw the fist inside the iron glove.

Indeed, one image will stay with us for a long time.  We were at Tienamin Square by the Forbidden City.  Kyle noticed alot of fire extinguishers around and asked me what they were for (you can see two in this picture of us).  I didn't know so I asked the guide.  He said "crazy monks."  Apparently the repression is so prominent in Tibet that the government must take steps to stop the self-immolation of protesters, to include having fire extinguishers stand like sentinels on the plaza.

Off to China -- Without the Blog

We are off to China tomorrow for a vacation with our grandson Kyle.  Unfortunately, because of the cyber security concerns with personal electronics and remote access in China we won't be doing a live blog from there as we go.  For those who are interested, however, we promise to blog it in retrospect when we get back.

The plan is to start the trip in Beijing where we will see the Forbidden City and also walk the Great Wall of China.  We are staying in an "old style" hotel, so that should give us a bit of a taste of how China used to be.

Then it is on to Xian to see the terra cotta warriors and learn a little bit of Chinese history.  To get there we'll take the bullet train, which should be an interesting thing in and of itself.  After Xian we head to Zhangjiajie in the southwest part of China.  The countryside here is said to be magnificent -- it was the backdrop for the movie Avatar.

Or last stop is going to be Shanghai.  Big city, the Bund, neon lights, and a side trip to the water town of Zhouzhang.   It's gonna be a blast.

Day Two In Newport

We had a delightful day in Newport.  The weather was perfect -- mid 60s and sunny -- and we had a new town to explore.  After a wonderful breakfast at the Malbone House we went out to The Breakers (the Vanderbilt summer home) for a visit.  It's huge - more than 70 rooms -- and ornate.  But also confused. --  they had Roman, French and Italian styles all at the same time.  Still a great place to see, if only to understand the excess of the Gilded Age

age and think about that kind of conspicuous consumption. 

After that we took a walk along the Cliffs -- it is always humbling to see the power of the waves crashing against the cliffs.   Katy, as always, looked marvelous as we climbed down the rocks.

Lunch was a pleasure -- we joined Don, Trudi, Ed and Giulia for a meal at the Black Pearl.  What can be better than New England Clam Chowder in New England??   And this was some of the best chowder we'd ever had. Add a little shopping (where else can Katy find shoes in her size?) and a visit to the oldest synagogue in the US and the day is complete.  Next up -- fine dining ....

Off to Newport ....

We are off to Newport for the weekend.  Paul will be doing some rugby evaluation at the New England Championships and Katy will be touring the city, seeing the mansions, shopping and hanging out with her friends. 

If the first night is any sign, we'll have a great time.after a spooky drive across the fog-covered Narragansett Bay bridge we arrived at the beautiful Francis Malbone House where we will spend the next 4 nights.  It was late, but we still enjoyed a dinner at the Clarke Cooke House Restaurant where we shared a 1/2 bottle of Sancere and had some great fresh cooked fish (Halibut for Paul; Sole for Katy) along with fresh beet salad.  Nice way to start the long weekend.