Chapter Six

 

As my memory of China grows distant I'm going to wrap things up by talking about the things we did, my lasting impressions and add a few tidbits that might be of interest. 

Our trip started in Shanghai, next to Beijing, Xian, Wuhan, Yichang, Chongquing, Guilin, ending in Hong Kong. We took four internal flights in China.  We embarked Victoria Cruises ship in Yichang, and disembarked in Chongquing.  Much of our travel was on very comfortable air-conditioned buses.  Each bus came with a new driver and local tour guide.  However, when I count the hours of boat travel, it seems pretty even.  Besides the cruise ship, we were on two smaller cruise ships, a catamaran, and a couple little boats maybe sampans (?) run by an oarsman.  We left the cruise ship a number of times to get into a waiting bus to see the highlights and coastal cities along the way.  One of the departures was for the purpose of getting on two different boats, a smaller cruiser where a meal was served and then onto an even smaller boat holding about 15 or 20 each, all for the purpose of seeing some of the most spectacular sights of the smaller or lesser gorges that could not service the large cruise ship.  The cities along the shorelines are somewhat more primitive comparatively, mostly farmland on either side of the mountains, that is until we approached Chonquing where we began to be signs of industry and finally a huge city.  Some of the industry was coal, not mining but getting it on boats for distribution.  Everything is built on angular landscapes.  It’s amazing.  I saw working boats getting the silt from the bottom of the river.  I learned earlier that the building of dams stopped the flow of silt, an important farming ingredient, so I can only surmise that they were gathering the displaced silt.  Barges carry enormous loads.  The number of truck or train railcars that were loaded onto each barge was astounding.  Don’t know what they were carrying but were visible on most of the waterways; and there were shipyards full of railcars, which we passed on our sightseeing buses.  We attended the famous Beijing Opera, an acrobatic show, were served the famous Peiking Duck dinner, drank lots of beer and ate lots of dumplings.  We had every variety some as tiny as beans and some so large they held surprises inside.  The food was extraordinary, tasty and well prepared.   Breakfasts were out of this world from hot Chinese food of all sorts to a Western variety that was endless. A variety of noodles was served along with rice. All food was prepared fresh as if it just came from the stove, not your ordinary buffet.  They say that the taller Chinese from the North got that way from eating noodles and the Southerners are shorter like the rice they eat.  All shopping was rushed and mostly from markets or museums, not exactly what we expected but there was a variety to choose from.  It was fun bargaining. We went to a silk factory, learned about the silk worms, saw unwinding of the cocoons to the end silk products. We also went to a jade factory, a silk rug making factory, a cloisenne factory and a jewelry factory.  By boat we saw a floating village in the Hong Kong Harbor;  not much left of it but we saw it.  We also saw a Panda reserve and zoo.

 

My fellow travelers and I lamented about  “how are we ever going to be able to describe what we’ve seen and experienced?”  It’s difficult, the beauty, and the vastness of the country, the number of large cities and many being built in wilderness areas, all will or have huge populations.  The number of new bridges being built was also noteworthy.  There’s so much history with every turn of a corner it’s hard to wrap one’s brain around all the information.  We hear so little about these ancient people.  There are 57 clans or ethnic people in China. 93 percent are Han people, who’s dialect is Mandarin.  56 Ethnic groups, or minorities, make up about 7 percent of China.  The recorded Dynasties go back to 2205 BC up to the current People’s Republic of China since 1949.   All the temples and highlights of the trip, The Great Wall, built about 220 BC, shrines, palaces, summer palaces, The Forbidden City, The Terre Cotta Museum in Xian, were all built by ancient dynasties and are two thousand or so years old.

 

The Terre Cotta soldiers, a lifelike clay army with horses and horsemen, were a highlight of the trip for me.  I remember when the discovery was made and have always wanted to see what it was all about.   It’s beyond imagination.  If someone were to fictionalize a story about such a finding it would not be believable.  Two thousand years under the ground!  I think I mentioned earlier that a farmer(s) discovered the soldiers by digging for a well in 1974.  The entire park, its museums, theatre, shops and workshops are built in this rural area.  The diggings to date are surrounded by a building that one walks through.  It’s the size of a football field bounded by the walkways and building’s walls.  And there’s more to be uncovered, huge areas.  Each life size piece is elegant in its draftsmanship.  Every face is different with unique features, stature and uniforms.  Replicas of officers, horsemen, horses, and even bronze chariots have been found.  Each piece was hand painted, mostly worn now but evidence exists on a number of the pieces.  The entire area was a burial ground or mausoleum .  The entire area was a burial ground or mausoleum.  It took 38 years to complete, the final stage had as many as 720,000 people working toward completion.  I read that thousands of officers and craftspeople were buried alive in order to keep the site a secret.  Eeek.  So were the Emperor’s concubines.  Be careful ladies!!!!  There is so much more information about this site that it’s worth researching. 

 

The Summer Palace is in Beijing built about 250 years ago famous for its gardens worldwide.  It has a huge man-made lake on which we took a boat across to an exit at the opposite end of the entrance to the park.  Besides the gardens there are beautiful bridges, walkways, buildings and a marble ship that can go nowhere.  The ship was built by the Empress that ended up being an irony because the Empress was in exile till death (maybe self-imposed) living at the Summer Palance and also could never leave, both sort of a prisoners of the environment.

 

The Forbidden City is in the center of Beijing and is truly a city within a city.  I had no idea of the enormous space it occupies while we were in it.  We saw so little of the entire grounds even though it was one of our longer tours.  The movie, The Littlest Emperor, was filmed there.  I intend to see it again and relive walking through the gated city.  It was basically a “capitol” city for emperors, a place to conduct business and was also a place for the Emperor to live.  There is a moat surrounding the city and it’s covered with what must be hundreds of ancient red roofed buildings.  It’s filled with artifacts. Much of what we saw looks like it needs refurbishing although the statuary and gardens were lovely.

 

The Great Wall is one of the Seven Wonders of the  World. One of the passes is outside Beijing in heavily wooded mountains.  That’s were we ascended.  The scenery is spectacular.  How people even thought to accomplish this feat is mind-boggling.  We, of course, saw a tiny portion, which was a small-fortified encampment with moats, bridges, towers and old buildings.  It was gorgeous.  The wall itself crosses China through highpeaked mountains in the clouds that are jagged and ends into the sea at the eastern end, north of Shanghai.