History

Hot nights in Xi’an

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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.

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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.

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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

Bell Tower

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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!

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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!

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Busy day in Beijing

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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.

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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.

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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.

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in the Forbidden City

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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!

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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

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!

Dragon Boat Festival

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Today was the first day of China’s three day Duanwu or Dragon Boat Festival holiday. The festival itself which falls on Wednesday, commemorates ancient China’s patriotic poet, Qu Yuan, who lived from 340 to 278 BC. Though stories vary somewhat, according to legend, Qu was accused of treason and banished from the ancient state of Chu for failing to support the king’s proposed alliance with the increasingly powerful state of Qin. During his years of exile, he wrote many enduring patriotic poems. When the state of Qin later captured the capital of Chu, Qu committed suicide by drowning himself in the Milou River. HIs death occurred on the 5th day of the 5th month of the Chinese lunar calendar which this year falls on June 12. Apparently the festival takes its name from the idea that people rowed their boats out into the river in an unsuccessful attempt to either save their beloved poet or retrieve his body.

At the beginning of the semester, when I saw the Dragon Boat Festival on our school calendar, I had visions of watching colourful boats filled with rowers racing on a local waterway. Sadly, that doesn’t happen in Dalian.

It would seem that the primary way that people here celebrate the festival is by eating zongzi, triangular packets of glutinous rice wrapped in bamboo leaves. The stores and markets have been filled with them for the past few days. It is said that this tradition originated when local people dropped sticky rice packets into the river to feed the fish and keep them from consuming Qu’s body!

We were given several homemade zongzi yesterday. Though the rice tasted okay, having taken on a mild grassy flavour from the bamboo leaves, we weren’t very impressed by its texture. For me, the word glutinous even sounds gluey and that’s exactly what it was!

A second tradition is the wearing of five-coloured silk cords around the wrists. These are being sold everywhere right now by women who have obviously been busy making them by hand. I bought mine for 1 yuan (about 17 cents) each and will wear them on Wednesday. Apparently, when the festival is over, they’re supposed to be cut off and thrown away to get rid of bad luck.

When we went down to the street market to pick up vegetables and meat this morning, we noticed lots of bundles of leaves being sold. We guessed that they too must have something to do with the festival. They didn’t look very edible and we had no idea what their purpose was until I read up on the celebration online and learned that they were mugwort leaves and calamus. Apparently, people put bundles of them over their doors to protect themselves against disease. I wonder if they have any effect on shingles? Perhaps I should have bought some! Actually, the stems and leaves of these plants are said to dispel an aroma that is thought to purify the air and discourage flies and mosquitoes so perhaps there’s something to the tradition.

Although this festival has long been part of Chinese culture, the government of the People’s Republic of China, established in 1949, refused to officially recognize it as a public holiday. It was only reinstated as a national holiday in 2008. Since it falls on a Wednesday this year, many people, including us, worked on Saturday and Sunday so that they could have today and tomorrow off and make it a three day vacation.

Since our tour of China is coming up soon, we decided not to go anywhere this holiday. Instead, we’re staying here in Dalian and being tourists in our own town but I’ll share more about that in future posts.

Second day in Qufu

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If you had an entire day to do anything you wanted, what would you do? That’s the situation we found ourselves in this morning. We’d allowed ourselves two full days in Qufu thinking that one might not be enough to see all three Confucius sites that we visited yesterday.

Knowing that we had an entire day to fill, we were in no hurry to get up this morning. I haven’t been sleeping well lately largely due to the fact that I’m fighting a nasty cold so a bit of extra rest was very welcome.

Once we were up and had had a late breakfast, we went to visit another ancient temple, this one dedicated to the memory of Yan Hui, a favourite disciple of Confucius. If it were located anywhere other than almost next door to the much larger and more impressive Confucius Temple complex, it would likely draw many visitors but we were almost alone and it was very peaceful. We could actually hear the birds chirping!

The Yan Temple has been undergoing renovations over the past few years. Apparently the cost of this massive facelift prompted a hefty increase to the admission fee which, I’m assuming, resulted in even fewer visitors. We learned, however, that if we could produce our combination tickets from yesterday, we would be admitted free of charge.

In addition to enjoying the tranquility of the temple grounds, we found the renovation project quite fascinating. One of the outer buildings houses a display of photos chronicling the meticulous work that has been done. The buildings that have been completed have received much more than a new paint job. Much dismantling and rebuilding was required to replace wooden parts and roofing that had deteriorated. Many of the intricate panels were taken down, painted and put up again.

After leaving the temple, we headed over to the International Youth Hostel and rented bicycles. Leaving town, we rode out into the countryside to look at the farms where we saw corn, wheat and other crops that we couldn’t identify. Though they appear to have been seeded by machine, we saw many people, mostly women, out in the fields pulling weeds. Imagine doing that by hand on a Canadian farm! I have no idea how far we rode. I’m pretty sure my butt will be telling me about it tomorrow but it was well worth any discomfort I may have to put up with.

After an early supper, we were strolling back toward our hotel when we decided to rest for awhile on a stone bench near the main gate to the city wall, a great spot for people watching. Little did we know that we were in for an unexpected surprise. We were about to leave when someone began banging on the enormous drum atop the wall. It heralded the beginning of a gate closing ceremony complete with elaborately costumed guards, flag and lantern bearers, a herald and others we couldn’t identify. It was a perfect ending to our stay in historic Qufu!

A day with Confucius

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Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart.
Confucius

We left Jinan yesterday morning and travelled south by bus to Qufu (pronounce Chu Fu). Small by Chinese standards, with a population of only about 86 000 people, Qufu is famous as the hometown of the great sage, Kong Fuzi, better known to us by the westernized version of his name, Confucius.

The old walled centre of Qufu is small and easy to get around on foot but the three principle sites; the Confucius Temple, the Kong family mansions and the Confucius Forest where the great teacher and his many descendants are buried, are absolutely enormous. We spent all day today exploring them.

When we stopped at the ticket office to purchase the combination tickets that would allow us to visit all three sites, we were also thinking about hiring an English guide but before we could, we were approached by a young college student who called himself Aku, an abbreviated version of his difficult to pronounce Chinese name, who offered to act as our guide for free if we would simply use his camera to take a few pictures of him throughout the day. We agreed and found him to be a delightful and knowledgeable companion.

We started our day at the Confucius Temple, China’s second largest imperial building complex after the Forbidden City in Beijing which we hope to visit in July. The temple started out as a simple memorial hall some 2500 years ago but over the ages, it mushroomed to today’s compound which covers 327.5 acres and is 1.3 km in length from north to south.

Though there is some debate about whether Confucianism should be considered a religion or simply a system of philosophy, the temple was once a site where sacrifices were offered to Confucius. He was a great thinker, a teacher, editor, politician and a philosopher whose teachings emphasized personal and governmental morality, correct social relationships, justice, loyalty and sincerity. He was a strong proponent of ancestor worship which is something we have a hard time getting our heads around but I can’t help wondering if he ever intended that nations of people should worship him. Whether it was his intent or not, many Asian cultures including Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese have been strongly influenced by Confucianism.

After spending all morning touring the temple complex we stopped for lunch then moved on to the Confucius mansions, a maze of 450 halls, rooms, buildings and passages where his wealthy and powerful descendants lived like kings. Emperors were known to drop in for visits and a special ceremonial gate near the main entrance was opened only when this happened. The complex included administrative offices and meeting rooms, family residences, kitchens, guest rooms, studies, libraries and a treasury. A peaceful garden of flowers and greenery are found at the rear. Aku told us that his dream would be to build a home like this one in the Chinese countryside but I only coveted the garden and a few unique features like the round doorways! I could also imagine children having endless hours of fun playing hide-and-go-seek in the many passageways!

After relaxing over coffee, it was time for Aku to leave us as he had a bus to catch later in the day. We took a pedicab 2 km north to the Confucius Forest, the oldest and largest family cemetery in the world. There, Confucius and his descendants have been buried for more than 2000 years, a practice that continues up to the present time. The peaceful pine and cypress forest covers an area of more than 200 hectares. Burial mounds and memorial plaques are scattered haphazardly throughout the area. Confucius, himself, lies beneath a grassy mound enclosed by a low wall. Though most of the tourists crowded around the tomb were simply curious, there were those who knelt and others who made offerings of flowers.

After walking back to our tiny, family-run hotel where every room number begins and ends with 8, considered a lucky number by the Chinese, we’re spending a quiet evening resting our very weary feet. Our hosts don’t speak a word of English but they are clearly delighted to have us, their very first Canadian guests, staying with them.

To see what is right and not do it, is want of courage or of principle.
Confucius

Thank you, Dr. Bethune

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Over the past few years we’ve stretched our comfort zones to such an extent that we don’t really know where the edges are anymore! I’m pretty sure we stepped outside them this morning, though, when we boarded a bus and headed out into the Chinese countryside with no definite idea how we’d get back to Jinan!

The bus dropped us off beside the highway and we walked two kilometres into the historic village of Zhujiayu. After the noise and pollution of city life in China, a walk in the country was literally a breath of fresh air! The crops on either side of the road were heading out already but it was a bit too soon to tell for sure if they were barley or bearded wheat.

Walking the narrow stone streets of Zhujiayu is a journey back in time. Protected by hills on three sides and dating back to at least the Ming and Qing dynasties, it’s easy to see why it’s been used as a set for a number of movies and television dramas. Though the central street was crowded with vendors selling snacks and tacky tourist souvenirs, we were delighted to see that effort has been made to restore parts of the crumbling village including the wall that enclosed its northern flank and to bring history to life for those who visit. We watched a donkey grinding grain into course flour that was then sifted by hand and used to make the chive stuffed tortillas that we ate for lunch. They were cooked outdoors on a small clay oven.

We found the construction of the now crumbling structures fascinating. Most were built of stone from the surrounding hillsides but others were made of brick covered with a layer of some kind of plaster, a building method still in use in this country today. Beneath the tiled roofs was a thick layer of thatch that would have acted as insulation.

After spending a few hours exploring almost every nook and cranny in the village, it was time to figure out how we’d get back to Jinan. According to our trusty Lonely Planet guidebook, there might be a bus that would take us to nearby Mingshui where we could catch another bus back to Jinan. If not, we could walk back to the highway and try flagging down any bus heading back toward Jinan.

As we exited the site, we stopped at the tourist services building to see if anyone there spoke enough English to advise us. Neither of the women on duty did but one of them hustled out to find someone who could. She soon returned with three smiling men. One of them spoke a few words of English but he phoned his wife who was somewhat more fluent and by passing the phone back and forth, we learned that her advice was that we walk back to the highway and flag down a bus. After the gentlemen produced their cameras and had their pictures taken with us, we headed off to do just that.

As we exited the gate, however, we were surrounded by taxi drivers offering to drive us into Mingshui or even the entire 80 km back to Jinan. Of course, they wanted an exorbitant amount in return for their services so we quickly said no and went on our way. I soon noticed that one of the men who’d crowded around us as we talked to the taxi drivers was following us on the opposite side of the road. When we got out of earshot of the others, he crossed the road and told us in broken English that if we would wait for ten minutes while he walked home and got his car, he would drive us to the bus station in Mingshui at no cost! We’ve found over and over again that the Chinese are more than willing to do things like this for us; in fact, they seem to consider it a privilege! As he drove, he explained that one of the reasons that the Chinese love Canadians is because more than fifty years ago, a Canadian doctor helped the Chinese people very much. He was, of course, speaking of Dr. Norman Bethune who died in China in 1939 while serving as a battlefield physician during the Japanese invasion of this country. He is considered a beloved hero to this day.

Though the bus from Mingshui delivered us to an unfamiliar bus station (Jinan has at least three of them) the taxi ride back to our hotel wasn’t much longer than it would have been from the main station where we caught our outgoing bus this morning. Another adventure was complete and our comfort zones, just a little bit bigger! Thank you, Dr. Bethune!

Great Wall, fantastic experience!

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How can I possibly put the Great Wall of China, the most enormous construction project in human history, into words that truly do it justice? For most of my life I couldn’t possibly have imagined that I would one day stand on this historic structure but that’s exactly what I did on Friday morning!

Known as Tiger Mountain Great Wall, the segment of the wall located about 12 km northeast of Dandong sees far fewer tourists than the sections that are closer to Beijing. Built during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1664), it runs parallel to the North Korean border and is the easternmost section of the Great Wall. Buffeted by wind and rain for more than 500 years, the wall had fallen into ruin until a large scale restoration project was begun in 1992. Now fully restored, it snakes its way up the steep mountainside to a height of 146.3 metres. One of three watchtowers stands like a beacon at the peak and provides a panoramic view across the Yalu River and into North Korea. From the peak, the wall makes a quick descent down the back side of the mountain ending near a narrow branch of the river.

As we left our bus and walked up the road toward it, seeing the Great Wall winding its way up the hillside in the morning mist was an absolute thrill. Of course, we couldn’t help wondering how well our old knees would handle the climb but I think the sheer exhilaration of being there helped carry us up the steep incline.

The forecast called for rain on Friday but Colleen (the redhead in one of the photos) and I are convinced that the umbrellas in my backpack and the rain cape in her bag were good luck charms as the weather was great; not too warm or too cold, no wind and not a drop of rain all day!

Since it was a holiday in China, we shared the wall with many other people but it wasn’t overly crowded and there was a wonderful sense of camaraderie as we shared this incredible experience with one another. We only heard a few words of English all day but plenty of delighted laughter as people huffed and puffed their way up the steep cement stairs that made up much of the climb. There were also high fives given as well as the universal thumbs up sign.

After reaching the far end of the wall, we enjoyed a fairly challenging hike back to our starting point but I’ll tell you more about that in a future post. For now though, I’m happy to say that our knees survived both the wall and the hike and we weren’t even sore afterward. Obviously, climbing the 67 stairs up to our apartment more than once a day for the past six weeks was excellent preparation!

Dandong, gateway to North Korea

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Friday’s anticipated four hour bus trip to Dandong turned into more than five when it took an hour and a half for the bus to wend it’s way through congested holiday traffic and get out of Dalian! We were riding on a modern long distance bus, however, so it wasn’t too gruelling. Once outside the city, the four lane highway was in great shape all the way so it was a comfortable ride. Signs along the highway were posted in both Chinese characters and Pinyin (the system used to transcribe Chinese characters into Roman script) with occasional signs in English as well. I found it cute that the right hand lane was labelled Carriage Way and the left, Overtaking Lane but the sign that we enjoyed the most was the one warning drivers Do not drive tiredly!

Liaoning Province is largely agricultural so we rode by many orchards, fields, rice paddies and a vast number of greenhouses. Work has just begun in the fields and everything that we saw happening was being done by hand. With the exception of one donkey and two horse-drawn carts, we didn’t see any livestock.

When we arrived in Dandong, it took awhile to figure out where and how to purchase our return tickets. It’s a good thing we did that right away though as many of yesterday’s buses were already sold out and the earliest one we could get on didn’t depart until 3:15 in the afternoon. The language barrier was a hindrance, of course, but as always, people were extremely helpful, particularly the young security guard at the bus station who, when we asked for directions to our hotel, walked us all the way there, a distance of 3 or 4 blocks!

After settling in and having a late lunch in the hotel restaurant, we set off on foot for the Yalu River which separates Dandong’s lively riverfront promenade from the more desolate looking city of Sinuiju, North Korea on the other side.

China is North Korea’s only major economic supporter and Dandong, a city of about 750 000 people and the principal gateway between the two countries, thrives on trade with North Korea. We watched trucks rumble slowly across the Sino-Korean Friendship bridge which is the official border crossing.

Pedestrians are not allowed on the bridge and we actually saw Chinese soldiers escort a couple back to the Chinese side of the bridge. Perhaps they were simply on the wrong bridge. In 1950, during the Korean War, American troops bombed the older bridge between the two countries in an attempt to cut off Chinese supplies to North Korea. The North Koreans dismantled the mangled end of the bridge leaving only a row of support columns standing in the river. The Broken Bridge stands next to the Friendship Bridge and is open to the public who want a closer view of North Korea. Admission to the bridge is normally 27 yuan but when we noticed that seniors over the age of 60 with an ID card qualify for a lower price, I decided that we should show the ticket agent our resident permits to see if they would give us the reduced rate. Sure enough, we were admitted for only 10 yuan each or approximately $1.60 Canadian!

The Broken Bridge wasn’t the nearest that we got to North Korea nor was Dandong itself our main reason for heading north on our three day break from school. Rather than making this post too long, however, I’ll be breaking it into a series. Come back tomorrow to find out the biggest reason we chose Dandong as our destination. For the moment though, let’s just say that it was Great and truly unforgettable!