Terracotta warriors

July 19, 2013 / edebock / 4 Comments

When we left home in February, there were only three items on my unwritten bucket list for China:

Climb the Great Wall
See a giant panda
See the army of terracotta warriors at Xi’an

On March 29, 1974, a group of peasant farmers came upon something completely unexpected while digging a well about 1.6 km east of the burial mound containing the remains of China’s first emperor. What at first appeared to be an earthenware jar was actually the head of a life-sized terracotta warrior, one of thousands buried with Emperor Qin Shi Huang to protect him in the afterlife.

The discovery prompted Chinese archeologists to investigate and what they found was one of the greatest archeological discoveries of the 20th century shocking not only China but the entire world. The pits in which the army of an estimated 8000 soldiers, 130 chariots and 670 horses were buried more than 2000 years ago had been roofed with wood before being covered with a metre or more of earth. Over time, the wood decayed and collapsed leaving the underground army in pieces. Fragments of heads, torsos, legs and arms have been uncovered and entire statues meticulously restored, each one different from the others. Many remain beneath the ground.

I remember reading about this amazing discovery and thinking how great it would be to see it but I didn’t think that I ever would. As I approached the pit that houses the bulk of the terracotta army, I was overcome with emotion. It was hard to believe that I was really there!

As we gazed out over the vast army of statues we were amazed! Amazed at the incredible workmanship, amazed at the years of work and the number of craftsmen that must have been involved in creating such a vast array of statues, amazed that anyone would actually commission this work to be buried with him when he died! We also shared our tour guide’s concern about the future preservation of the statues. Though a building now protects them from wind and rain, there is no temperature or humidity control. The figures were originally painted and covered with a laquer finish but what remained quickly began to fade and flake off when they were exposed to the air and very little colour can now be seen.

I was also amazed at the size of the site, noting how much land that was once farmed is no longer. On the other hand, thousands of tourists visit every year significantly boosting the local economy. And what happened to the farmers who made the original discovery? Their land was confiscated by the Chinese government and one of them spends his days in the gift shop signing autographs and having his picture taken with tourists (for a fee, of course). It was a thrill to meet him but I wonder if he might have been happier living out his life on the farm.

Before leaving Xi’an, we also crossed another item off my bucket list. I’ve always wanted to ride a bicycle built for two. One of my Chinese students recommended that we ride bicycles on the Xi’an city wall so we promised her we’d do that. When I saw that we had the option of renting a tanden bike instead of two individual ones, I thought there’d be no better place to fulfill that dream so this one’s for Grace!

Hot nights in Xi’an

July 18, 2013July 19, 2013 / edebock / Leave a comment

Leaving Beijing behind, we travelled southwest to Xi’an, once the eastern terminus of the Silk Road, the ancient trade route between China and the Mediterranean. We opted to travel this leg of our journey by high speed train in order to see more of the Chinese countryside. Cruising along at 300 km/hour, the ride was smooth and comfortable; like flying without ever leaving the ground.

For the first part of the trip, flat farmland divided into a myriad of small fields stretched as far as we could see. At the speed we were travelling, it was difficult to identify the crops but we did see some rice and lots of corn. As we travelled further from Beijing, the flat plain gave way to more rugged terrain. The train passed through many tunnels and wherever possible, small fields were carved into the hillsides. Land that would be considered unusable here in Canada was being cultivated to help feed China’s more than 1.3 billion people.

When we reached our hotel inside the city wall in the heart of Xi’an, we were delighted to learn that we’d been upgraded to a larger room. We’re not sure if this was simply good luck or if the fact that I’d complained to our tour organizer about the Beijing guide and the unreasonable schedule that she’d planned for our first day there had something to do with us receiving special treatment. In any case, the “larger room” was actually a beautiful two room suite with a big bathroom that housed a deep soaker tub, the first bathtub I’d seen in China! As one who prefers baths to showers, I was in seventh heaven!

The hotel was within easy walking distance of both the Bell Tower and the Drum Tower which were spectacularly lit at night. As in other ancient towns across China, these structures served an important role in the days before people had clocks in their homes. The huge bell was rung at dawn while the drum marked nightfall.

Bell Tower

Drum Tower

It wasn’t until after we’d returned from exploring the area near our hotel and photographing the towers that we discovered that the air conditioning in our suite wasn’t working. Though someone from hotel maintenance worked on it twice and assured us both times that he’d fixed it, it never did work properly and we spent two very hot nights in Xi’an!

Hanging out in the hutongs

July 17, 2013July 17, 2013 / edebock / Leave a comment

According to an old Chinese saying, “There are 3600 hutongs with names and as many without names as the hairs on an ox.” A visit to Beijing wouldn’t be complete without spending some time exploring these narrow alleyways. We spent our first evening in Beijing exploring the ones close to our hotel on foot but also enjoyed touring others by rickshaw, the most popular way for tourists to see these neighbourhoods.

Some 600 years ago, while Emperor Zhu Di and his family lived in luxury within the walls of the Forbidden City, the common people of Beijing lived in the hutongs and many still do today. Hutongs are made up of rows of traditional residences, each built around a central courtyard. Joined one to another, these single storey homes form crowded but enchanting warrens where a warm sense of community abides. Though many of these residences have been modernized with the addition of electricity and plumbing, public bathrooms in each neighbourhood continue to serve the needs of those that haven’t been.

We had the opportunity to visit two courtyard homes, one a family dwelling and the other now a guest house. Built 300 years ago as the home of a government official, the guest house is larger than most hutong homes and its enterprising owners saw an opportunity to turn it into a thriving business when Beijing hosted the summer Olympics in 2008.

Some of the grander courtyard homes have stately looking red doors flanked by carved stones. Rectangular stones indicate that the house was originally owned by a government official while circular ones identify military homes.

Hundreds of hutongs survive but the number has dropped dramatically during recent years as Beijing rushes to become a modern city. Fortunately, some of the hutongs have been designated as protected areas by the government in an attempt to preserve this aspect of cultural history.

Burial places

July 16, 2013July 16, 2013 / edebock / Leave a comment

The morning following our very busy day in Beijing, we drove about 50 kilometres northwest of the city to a secluded valley that protects the burial places of thirteen emperors of the Ming Dynasty (1368 to 1644). There we walked the peaceful Sacred Way leading toward the oldest and largest of the tombs, that of emperor, Zhu Di, builder of Beijing’s Forbidden City. Twelve sets of stone animals (including the anatomically incorrect elephant pictured below) lined the first part of the road followed by enormous stone guards and officials closer to the tomb. Unlike the crowds of the previous day, we were almost alone as the Chinese tend to visit these sites only on designated days such as Tomb Sweeping Day in the early spring.

The tomb itself consists of a main gate, a series of courtyards, and the Hall of Eminent Favours which now houses a historical display of pictures and artifacts related to the reign of Zhu Di. Beyond the hall, through more gates and archways stands the Soul Tower which houses the largest stele in China. Much like a gigantic headstone, a stele is an upright slab of stone bearing inscriptions and serving as a monument. A well treed hill behind the Soul Tower is the actual burial mound. There the bodies of the emperor, the empress who predeceased him by several years and 16 concubines are interred. The concubines were sacrificed at the time of Zhu Di’s death so that they would accompany him into the afterlife. It’s hard for us to get our heads around a practice like that one!

Later in the day, we continued on to Badaling, the most visited and most photographed section of China’s Great Wall which is also known as the world’s longest cemetery due to the number of lives lost during its construction. Many, many bodies are said to be buried within the wall.

After climbing a section of the wall near Dandong earlier in the year, we hadn’t planned on visiting it a second time but many of our students urged us to see the wall near Beijing as well telling us that it was much longer and much older than the portion we’d already visited. Though our climb to the eighth watchtower and highest point in the area in the hot afternoon sun lacked the Wow! factor of our first wall experience, it was definitely worth the visit if only for the fabulous views of the mountains with the wall snaking across it. Our tour package included hour long foot massages back in our hotel room when the day was over; definitely a good way to relax after the climb!

Busy day in Beijing

July 15, 2013July 16, 2013 / edebock / 4 Comments

I prefer to blog as I travel while the images and impressions are fresh in my mind but our whirlwind tour of China didn’t allow time for that. Now that we’re home and recuperating from jet lag, I’ll do my best to recap for you over the next few days.

As we walked toward Tiananmen Square on our first morning in Beijing, I felt completely overwhelmed. Many times during our months in China, we commented on how surreal it felt to actually be living there but in early June of 1989 when tanks rolled into that square and mowed down hundreds of protesting students I couldn’t possibly have imagined that I might someday stand on that very spot. The exact number who died that day has never been officially confirmed. The reality of being there brought a lump to my throat and tears to my eyes. When I mentioned my feelings to our tour guide, she quickly changed the subject pointing out the Great Hall of the People where the nation’s government meets, the China National Museum, the Monument to the People’s Heroes and the Mausoleum in the centre of the square where Chairman Mao’s embalmed body has lain in state since his death in 1976. I was later told that tour guides are not allowed discuss the Tiananmen massacre with foreigners.

Tiananmen Square

Joining a throng of visitors, mostly Chinese, we passed beneath the gigantic portrait of Chairman Mao and through the Gate of Heavenly Peace into the Forbidden City. It was from high on this gate that Mao proclaimed the formation of the People’s Republic of China on October 1, 1949 and we truly felt that we were at the heart of the country.

The Gate of Heavenly Peace

Our Beijing guide chose to pack too much into our first day there making our tour of the Forbidden City, so-called because it was off limits to the ordinary people for its first 500 years, a rushed one. Originally constructed over a 14 year period in the early 1400s when China’s third emperor, Zhu Di, moved his capital from Nanjing in the south to Beijing in the north, the Forbidden City is China’s largest and best-preserved complex of ancient buildings. We would have liked more time to explore it but fortunately, it is not unlike many other similar complexes that we’ve seen in Asia.

in the Forbidden City

Next on the day’s agenda was the Summer Palace, a huge park complete with gardens, pavilions, temples, bridges and man-made Kunming Lake. The soil that was excavated to form the lake was used to build Longevity Hill which overlooks it. The Summer Palace was vandalized during an Anglo-French invasion in 1860 but rebuilt in 1888 as a palatial summer resort for the Empress Dowager Cixi, also known as China’s Dragon Lady. She spared no expense even using money that was earmarked for a modern navy to build an enormous marble boat at the northern edge of the lake!

Kunming Lake and Longevity Hill

Our third historical site for the day was the circular Temple of Heaven with its three levels representing God, the emperor and the people. Sally, who we dubbed the “reluctant tour guide”, dismissed it as unimportant because “we have no God anymore”. She told us that Mao gave the Chinese people “freedom from religion”. She didn’t appear to share the hunger for something to believe in that we sensed in many of the young Chinese that we were acquainted with.

Temple of Heaven

Again, we would have liked to have had enough time to explore the peaceful park surrounding the temple but that was not to be. These are only a few of the highlights of a very busy day that ended with a Kung Fu show that was a fantastic combination of martial arts and dance.

In one way, we were very blessed while we were in Beijing. Did you notice the sky in the photos? Beijing is usually shrouded in heavy smog. It reaches such dangerously high levels that some people actually wear gas masks outdoors but just before we arrived, the air was cleansed by heavy rain and we enjoyed clear skies and unusually fresh air!

Packing again!

June 30, 2013 / edebock / 2 Comments

If you’ve been reading my blog since we embarked on this adventure, you’ll probably remember that I wrote an entire series about packing back in February. Though I’m getting tired of my limited wardrobe choices, I’m happier than ever that we chose to bring as little as we did to China with us.

We like to travel light. We had originally hoped to leave the bulk of our luggage in Beijing while we travel through China then pick it up and fly home to Canada from there but as we began to plan our trip we realized that that wasn’t going to be an efficient use of time or money. Since we’re going to be picked up and have a driver at each destination along the way, hauling our luggage isn’t going to be as cumbersome as it would be if we had to handle it on our own but the checked baggage limit for each passenger on domestic flights in China is one piece weighing a maximum of 44 pounds. There are also rules pertaining to carry-on baggage but thankfully, the airlines are not strict about enforcing them and ours are likely to be heavier than they’re supposed to be!

Fortunately, though we’ve picked up a few mementoes and been given a few gifts, we were careful not to buy too much while we were here. Donating several of the books that we brought with us to the staff library at school and using up most of the medications and toiletries has given us space and weight for the few extra items that we’ll be taking home with us.

In addition to making sure that we meet the weight requirements, there are other challenges to packing at this end of the journey. Being somewhat anal, I like to be packed well in advance of any departure. At home, that’s easy to accomplish. Once the suitcases are packed, we simply wear clothing that we’re not taking with us. That leaves only a few last minute items to add to the suitcases just before we leave. That doesn’t work when everything you have is going with you though! I am planning on leaving a few badly worn items of clothing behind including a pair of pyjamas. Though it isn’t uncommon here to see adults walking the streets in what are obviously pyjamas, I’m not about to join them! No, a lot of our packing has to be done at the last minute this time. One suitcase is already fully packed with our winter wardrobe and other items that we won’t likely need as we travel but I won’t be able to finish packing the other one or the carry-ons until the morning we leave.

If we were flying straight home from here, I wouldn’t care if the suitcases were full of dirty laundry. In fact, they probably would be but since we’re going to be travelling for a couple of weeks, I want everything to be clean when we leave. Again, that’s more difficult to accomplish than it would be at home in Canada because we don’t have a clothes dryer here. I can’t do a load or two of laundry at the last minute unless I want to travel with wet clothes and just think what that would do to the weight of things!

Because we don’t have enough of the basics to last for the entire trip, I will have to do some hand washing in hotel sinks along the way but that’s not a problem. In fact, that’s one of the tricks to travelling light on any trip.

Graduation day!

June 27, 2013June 27, 2013 / edebock / 10 Comments

Yesterday was graduation day for our Class A and B kids. The ceremony was short and simple but effective. Richard Guo, founder and president of EIE, was our guest speaker. He commended the students for their hard work this year and challenged them to continue learning and growing as they go abroad to study. Sissi gave an excellent speech on behalf of the students thanking the teachers and her fellow students for a great year. Diplomas were handed out and the students received their yearbooks. Filled with pictures of class times and fun times, these will be treasured mementoes of a very special year.

Following a relaxed time of signing yearbooks and taking lots of pictures, we moved to a nearby hotel for a lovely graduation dinner. It was still early evening when the festivities ended but the students weren’t ready to call it a day so most of us piled into student cars and taxis and headed off to enjoy a couple of hours of karaoke! It was loud and the room was sweltering but it was fun! We knew that several of our girls were excellent singers but some of the others surprised us with hidden talent!

Yesterday was fun but today will be more difficult. Today we say good bye. Yesterday we wondered why the graduation exercises had been scheduled for our second last day instead of the last. Today I’m glad they were. Yesterday there was celebration and laughter. Today there will be tears.

It seems we leave a little bit of our hearts wherever we go, especially when kids are involved. This time though, we may see some of them again as several are going to Canada to study. In fact, we’re almost certain to see one of them.
We’ve laughingly threatened to put someone in our suitcase and take them home with us before but this time we might almost do that! Sheila will be heading off to begin her studies in Windsor, Ontario in January but her college, unlike many others, doesn’t offer its international students a home stay option when they first arrive in Canada so we’ve invited her to come spend some time with us and it looks like she probably will! That’s Sheila in the pink t-shirt under my right arm below.

Okay, I’m off to school now for the very last day and I’m well armed with kleenex for those teary good byes!

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Little Street

June 24, 2013June 24, 2013 / edebock / 5 Comments

According to the signs,the street below our apartment is called Lanqing Jie but to English speakers in the area, it’s known as Little Street. How can I possibly put it into words that will bring it to life for you? Pictures will help but without the sounds and smells, something is missing. Little Street really must be experienced to be fully appreciated but since you can’t all come to visit, I’ll try my best to describe it.

Close your eyes and imagine the sound of a crowd such as you might hear at a sporting event. Now add intermittent horns honking, the occasional rumble of an old truck or the sound of a motorcycle passing by, and if you can hear it, the sizzle of food hitting a hot grill. As darkness falls, add music pouring from the open doors of a nearby restaurant and the sounds of bottles clinking and voices rising as some of the patrons enjoy the open air seating across the street. Little Street is usually quiet for a few hours in the middle of the night!

Then there are the smells, most of them emanating from the various food stands along the street. Barbequing skewers of meat over hot coals is very popular and usually smells pretty tasty but sometimes billows of smoke fill the air. Occasionally the smell of overheated cooking oil forces us to close our windows.

You can buy almost anything on Little Street. In addition to the restaurants and food stalls, there are several fruit and vegetable stands and lots of permanent businesses as well as the vendors who simply set out their wares along the curbs to sell. There’s a pharmacy that’s clean, bright and well organized but most of the shops selling clothing, hardware and other household items are tiny and crowded. The scene is a constantly changing one. Where fast food was being sold a few days ago, a new beverage shop called Miss Milk is now celebrating its grand opening.

Though Little Street seems pretty unique to us, there are thousands of streets just like it in hundreds of cities across this country! It’s just one of the many faces of China.

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Gambei!

June 21, 2013June 21, 2013 / edebock / 3 Comments

Who knew that I would have my very first taste of Canadian ice wine while living in China? Life is full of the unexpected!

I didn’t expect to meet Richard Guo, founder and president of EIE (Education in English), the company that employs us to teach English at Liaoning Normal University while I was here in Dalian either. After all, he makes his home in Mississauga, Ontario.

The day before yesterday, however, while we were relaxing at home the phone rang and we were informed that Mr. Guo was at the school and wanted to meet us. We were asked if we could come right away and, of course, we did. He started by telling us that he wished we weren’t leaving at the end of this term and that we are welcome to return to China and to EIE at any time in the future. We’d been told that already but we didn’t expect to hear it directly from the top dog! He went on to explain that the company is expanding and that he was actually in China to sign an agreement to begin offering English instruction to nurses in training at Dalian Medical University. If plans proceed as expected, nursing students who study English with EIE will be able to take their first three years of training here and then transfer to an affiliated college in Ontario to complete their degree. After explaining all of this, Mr. Guo invited me to join him at the official signing ceremony which was to be held this morning! That was certainly unexpected!

At 8:30 this morning, Mr. Guo (pictured on the left below), our supervising teacher Cliff, and I met at our school gate where we were picked up by a very comfortable van from the medical university and taken to the new campus overlooking the ocean at Lushun which is about an hour from here at the tip of Liaoning Peninsula. It was a bright sunny morning and the drive reminded me of travelling through parts of British Columbia.

When we arrived at our destination, we were greeted by an English speaking staff member who took us on a short tour of the campus before accompanying us to the very formal boardroom where the ceremony would take place. Cliff and I didn’t really know what to expect but we felt a bit like visiting dignitaries as we were ushered about with great decorum. In reality, I think I was only there as the token Canadian and because I had no classes scheduled until late this afternoon!

Cliff and I had no active role in the actual signing ceremony but we were each provided with a translator to explain the key points of the speeches and discussion that took place before the documents were signed and sealed. Our delegation sat across the long boardroom table from the president of the medical university, the director its school of nursing, the head of its foreign languages department, the director of teaching, the president of a separate but affiliated school of nursing and one or two other important individuals. As soon as the ceremony was over, most of them rushed away to other meetings related to the fact that it’s graduation week at the university. We relaxed over tea until most of us reconvened for lunch in a private dining room with an ocean view.

Lunch was a most interesting affair. It was by far the fanciest and most beautifully presented meal that I’ve enjoyed in China. Though there were a wide variety of dishes, seafood was featured prominently. I’m not overly fond of jellyfish but I took a bit to be polite and it was better than any I’ve had before. The abalone soup, scallops on the half shell and sweet and sour prawns were heavenly. Lunch really wasn’t about the food though. Between delicious morsels, we toasted everyone and everything that had anything at all to do with the new agreement! That’s where the ice wine came in. Richard Guo brought it all the way from Canada for the toast that he proposed! We used a lovely red wine for all the others. We were constantly out of our chairs clinking glasses and declaring Gambei! (cheers!) Even Cliff and I got into the action. When my turn came, I congratulated both sides of today’s agreement telling them that in addition to benefiting them, it will also help alleviate Canada’s nursing shortage which is expected to worsen in the next few years as more and more nurses reach retirement age. I told them that, as part of Canada’s aging population, I appreciate the fact that they plan to send well trained young nurses to help take care of me in my old age!

Gambei!

Hidden treasure!

June 16, 2013June 16, 2013 / edebock / 4 Comments

If you’ve been reading my blog for the past year or more, you may remember that Richard and I are avid geocachers. Geocaching is a high-tech adult treasure hunting game in which participants use GPS devices to search for geocaches, or containers, that have been hidden by other players. Every find is logged on the official caching website at www.geocaching.com. There are presently more than 2 million geocaches and 5 million geocachers worldwide and these numbers are growing all the time.

Between April and November of last year, Richard and I located 221 caches spread across Canada’s four western provinces. When we decided to come to China, I checked the website and discovered that there were only a handful of caches in the Dalian area. Most had been placed here by foreign tourists and I got the impression that they weren’t being maintained so we decided to leave our GPS unit at home.

A couple of days ago, just for a lark, I decided to take another look at the website. Now that we’ve been here for several months and know our way around the city, I wondered where the caches were located. When I read about the one called Dalian 360, I immediately wished that we’d brought the GPS with us. "A beautiful panoramic view awaits," read the description. "A nice but steep hike, paved steps, along the ridge of a hill at Fuguo Park." A quick check using Google Maps told me that Fuguo Park was an easy bus ride from here in an area we were familiar with. When I discovered that the last person to visit the cache had dropped not just one, but two trackables into it, I wondered if there was any chance that we could find it without the GPS!

A trackable is geocaching game piece that is stamped with a unique tracking code. Some of them have travelled thousands of miles thanks to geocachers who move them from cache to cache and record their movements on the website. This is an aspect of the game that we really enjoy. In addition to helping 15 trackables along their way, we’ve launched two of our own by placing one in each of the two caches that we hid near our home in Alberta, Canada. One of them is now in a cache in Colorado and the other is in the Netherlands.

I knew that finding a geocache without using its GPS coordinates was a long shot but I’ve been wanting to hike some of the hills in and around Dalian anyway and I knew that we’d enjoy the outing even if we didn’t find the cache. Immediately after lunch today, I looked up the webpage again and jotted down a few notes:

on hill above trail following ridge line
views of Dalian skyline and Xinghai Bay
under rock near 9 trunked "octopus tree"

I also drew a rough map and made a couple of quick sketches based on photos that had been posted by previous finders. Without those, finding the cache without a GPS would have been virtually impossible.

After exiting the bus, we had no trouble finding the street that took us up a very steep hill to the park’s east entrance. From there, we continued to follow a narrow road and then well maintained trails higher and higher. Each time we came to a V, we took the path that looked like it would take us up to the ridge. Once there, we hadn’t walked very far when I recognized the views I’d seen in the photos online. Glancing to my left, there it was; the very distinctive octopus tree! We were in the right place but could we find the cache? I climbed to the left of the tree while Richard scrambled around to its right and within moments, he made the find!

Before we’d even had a chance to open the container, three muggles (non cachers) arrived on the scene and started picking berries! We moved a short distance away and surreptitiously removed the trackables, replaced them with a keychain for someone else to find and signed the logbook. But how could we put the container back in place with three people watching us? Instead, we took it with us and continued our hike along the ridge to the next peak. By the time we returned, the berry pickers had moved on and we were able to put it back in place for the next cacher to find!

The trackables will go back to Canada with us next month to be placed in geocaches there. One of them started its journey in Finland in October of 2011 while the other was released in Okinawa, Japan in January of this year.