Taking a break

October 24, 2013 / edebock / 5 Comments

After a mostly sleepless night worrying about how to deal with everything in my parents’ apartment, we decided to take a break today and go on an adventure with our grandsons, Sam and Nate.

Vancouver is enjoying a fabulous October so the drive up the Sea to Sky Highway to Britannia Beach was spectacular. The mine, which operated there from 1904 to 1974, was once the largest producer of copper in the British Empire and is now home to the fascinating Britannia Mine Museum. There the boys enjoyed panning for gold, riding a train into the depths of the mine and inspecting old machinery.

Ready for the underground tour!

Sam was dwarfed by the wheel of the gigantic haul truck.

After exploring the museum, we stopped for a picnic lunch at Porteau Cove on our way back to the city. The sunshine sparkling on the ocean and the smell of the sea were good for my soul and probably good for my blood pressure too!

Feeling somewhat rejuvenated, we’ll head back over to the apartment this evening to continue the work that still needs to be done there. Hopefully, I’ll have a better sleep tonight!

Real China

July 22, 2013 / edebock / 2 Comments

There’s China that the tourists see and then, just a few metres away, there’s real China. One of our table mates on our Yangtze River cruise, who had been to Beijing and Xi’an just as we had, mentioned that he was surprised at how clean and modern China was. That’s because you haven’t seen the real China, we told him.

Toward the end of our first day in Beijing, our tour guide dropped us off at a marketplace. It turned out to be a tourist trap selling low quality, over-priced goods and souvenirs; not at all the sort of place where real Chinese people shop. It held little interest for us so after relaxing for a little while in a nearby Starbucks, we went for a walk. Down a narrow alley, less than a block from the glitzy market, I stopped to use a public bathroom. It consisted of several metal squat toilets set into a cement floor. That’s all! No cubicles, no sinks, nothing but the squatty potties! I was about to take a picture when a local lady walked in so I hastily shoved my camera back into my purse and left. She was surprised enough to see a foreigner there; I wasn’t sure she’d appreciate or understand me taking a photo! That’s real China.

Later, as I mentioned in my last post, we spent an evening strolling East Nanjing Road, Shanghai’s famous shopping street. The crowds enjoying the music, action and glittering lights along this popular shopping strip were largely a mix of Chinese and foreign tourists. I doubt that many of the foreigners had any idea what they’d find if they wandered just one block to either side of the street they were on.

When we exited the subway, we accidentally took a wrong turn and found ourselves walking parallel to East Nanjing Road, one block over from where we intended to be. There it was dark and dirty and we had to walk around piles of old broken building material. It looked as if several places were being torn down or renovated. That didn’t bother me but the two men sleeping on the sidewalk in their underwear did! I’m pretty sure they were both breathing but I didn’t actually hang around to find out. That was the first and only time in our almost five months in China that I wasn’t entirely sure how safe we were but that’s real China.

Don’t get me wrong! We loved our time in China. It was an amazing adventure and I don’t regret one moment of the time we spent there but I wouldn’t want anyone to get the false impression that China is the shining face that it tries to put on for the rest of the world. It’s not third world but it still has a long way to go. As long as you’re willing to accept it for what it is, warts and all, it’s very easy to love though especially since its people are so warm and friendly toward its foreign guests.

Shanghai, city of contrasts!

July 21, 2013 / edebock / 1 Comment

When we went to China, Shanghai wasn’t high on our list of places to visit. As you can probably guess by now, we’re fascinated by history and culture and I viewed Shanghai, with its population of 23.5 million people, as little more than a massive modern city. The only thing that actually drew us to Shanghai as a possible place to visit was the fact that we had friends living there. We got to know the Kawabatas when we attended the same church during our year in Japan and Itoshi was transferred to Shanghai not long after we left that country in 2009.

When we discovered that the tour that included everything we most wanted to see in China ended in Shanghai, we decided to go there after all. We timed it so that we’d finish our tour on a Friday afternoon and then spend the weekend with our friends before flying back to Canada from there.

As time went by, I became more excited about seeing Shanghai. I looked forward to seeing the contrast between the old and traditional in Beijing and the new and modern in Shanghai. Little did I know that I would see both in Shanghai. It is truly a city of contrasts!

Our Lonely Planet guidebook suggests that “Shanghai is best seen as an epilogue to your China experience” and I’m glad we saw it that way. It also refers to Shanghai as “the future that China has long been waiting for”.

Our tour began at the Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Hall which gave us a good overview of the city both past and present before we began to explore it. With its massive model of the city and its dizzying 3D wrap around virtual tour in which we seemed to float over the metropolis, we soon felt as if we were no longer strangers there. Historic photos, maps and dioramas gave us a picture of its colourful past. Our next stop was the 88 storey Jinmao Tower for an amazing bird’s eye view of the city.

After lunch, we were off to the most traditionally Chinese part of Shanghai where we toured the classical Yu Garden, founded by the Pan family, rich Ming dynasty officials in the 1500s. Afterward, we relaxed over coffee at Starbucks in the middle of the adjacent and very crowded bazaar area with its many tacky tourist shops and outdoor vendors.

The building under construction in the background will be the world’s tallest when it’s finished.

Our evening was free so we took the subway from our hotel to East Nanjing Road, one of the most famous and crowded shopping streets in China. The pedestrian street was a glowing forest of neon lights and crowded with people. It was a vibrant and noisy hub of activity with people strolling, singing, and dancing while others hawked their goods. We even joined one of the groups for an old time waltz!

The next morning we were back on East Nanjing Road to see it in the daylight and do a bit of shopping. Look very closely and you’ll see the same KFC and McDonalds signs in both photos!

From there, it was an easy walk to the Bund where we strolled along the riverfront in awe of the contrast between the two sides of the river. On our side stood stately very European looking buildings. Symbolic of the city’s colonial past, they once housed Shanghai’s most powerful banks and trading houses. Today, the Bund is a designer retail and dining area with some of the city’s most exclusive boutiques, restaurants and hotels. Across the river, is the futuristic skyline of the Pudong New Area looking like the set for a science fiction movie. Thirty years ago, that area was still farmland.

Perhaps the most amazing building we saw in Shanghai was the one where our friend, Itoshi, works where we were dropped off at the end of our tour of China!

Yangtze River cruise

July 20, 2013July 22, 2013 / edebock / 1 Comment

Other than our overnight boat trip on Halong Bay in Vietnam on Christmas Day 2009, Richard and I had never been on a cruise until our recent voyage down the Yangtze River. On July 7, we flew from Xi’an to Chongqing where we were supposed to board the MV Jenna, the largest Victoria Cruises five star luxury ship to ply the waters of the mighty Yangtze. Unfortunately, the Jenna was unable to dock at Chongqing due to unusually high water levels so we were bussed an hour and a half downstream to Fuling where we boarded shortly before dusk. After settling into our cabin and exploring the ship, we sat on our little balcony enjoying the night air until everyone was on board and the ship set sail at 11:00 p.m.

There were 380 something passengers onboard. Most were Chinese but there was also a group of Taiwanese travelling together as well as a group from the University of Virginia that included retired American astronaut, Kathryn Thornton, veteran of four space flights and now a member of the UVA faculty. We were one of four couples referred to as the “independents” because we weren’t part of a larger group. The eight of us were table mates and were together on all three shore excursions because, though we represented Switzerland, France, Portugal and Canada, we shared the ability to communicate in English.

We struck up an instant friendship with Carla and Francisco, the Portuguese couple who actually reside in Macao. We shared so many values and interests in common that we could have happily spent the entire cruise sitting on one of our adjoining balconies talking! We didn’t do that though as the ship presented us with a busy schedule for each of our three days onboard.

Though I thought about it, I didn’t actually make it to any of the early morning tai chi sessions and we certainly didn’t take advantage of the opportunity to watch movies in our comfortable cabin. After all, we could do that at home! We did take in two very informative sessions with our river guide, Luther Zou, who shared not only an introduction to the Yangtze and the famed Three Gorges but also a fascinating glimpse into his life as a country boy growing up on a Chinese farm. We enjoyed sumptuous meals, took in two evening shows put on by the multi-talented ship’s staff and of course, spent lots of time on deck enjoying the magnificent scenery as we passed through the gorges. We can only imagine how much more spectacular they must have been before the Three Gorges Dam caused the upstream water level to rise more than 300 feet forming a 600 km long reservoir. Above the high water line along the river’s bank, we saw many of the relocation villages built to house many of the approximately 1.24 million people whose homes were submerged by the rising water. More than 1000 archeological sites were also flooded. Some cultural and historic relics were moved to higher ground but others have been lost for all time.

The dam has had a positive impact not only as the world’s largest hydroelectric project but also providing flood control downstream and improving navigation on the river but I wonder what its long term negative impact might be. How might the astronomical weight of that much water affect the earth’s surface? We saw evidence of several landslides along the river banks and I’ve read that the dam, built in the western section of Xiling Gorge, sits on a seismic fault!

We enjoyed all three shore excursions. The first day we climbed the steep incline to the temple area on the top of Ming Mountain. Known as the City of Ghosts, it pays tribute to the King of the Underworld. Though I found that concept a bit disturbing, the outing was fun and once again I was thankful that the 67 stairs up to our fifth floor apartment in Dalian had prepared my legs well for such activities! The second day’s excursion was by far our favourite. We first boarded smaller ferries for a trip up Shennong Stream, a picturesque tributary of the Yangtze, and then downsized to smaller sampans to travel even further upstream. The scenery was truly spectacular. After staying up very late that night to watch from the deck as the Jenna passed through the first of the ship locks at the Three Gorges Dam, we rose early the next morning to visit the dam.

After returning to the ship and passing through the eastern section of the third gorge, we enjoyed a final meal onboard then disembarked at Yichang where many of us were taken to the airport to catch the same flight to Shanghai. It was there that we had to say a sad farewell to our new friends. Even when we’re surrounded by some of the world’s most stunning scenery, life is still about people and ours have definitely been enriched by our time with Carla and Fransisco!

Qutang Gorge

Wu Gorge

Pictures hardly do justice to the beauty that surrounded us!

Sampan on Shennong Stream

Our new friends

Eastern portion of Xiling Gorge

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!

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.

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A day at the zoo

June 12, 2013June 12, 2013 / edebock / 9 Comments

After yesterday’s heavy rain, this morning dawned bright and clear; a perfect day to spend at the zoo. We went with Kevin and Derek, 16-year-old twin students of Richard’s who leave for boarding school in Maryland in early August. We met them at the school early this morning expecting to spend half an hour or more on the bus getting to the zoo. Instead, their father drove us there in his BMW. As we headed for the line up at the ticket booth, four zoo passes mysteriously appeared in Derek’s hand. Though he wouldn’t tell us where they came from, I suspect that they were also a gift from his father!

Covering 180 hectares, Dalian Forest Zoo is the largest city zoo in China and home to more than 150 species of animals. We’d heard that it was worth a visit but it far exceeded our expectations. We were amazed by the number of animals in the zoo; not just one or two of each kind, but in many cases, large groups. I feared that we might find them housed in cramped and dirty quarters like the polar bear exhibit that we saw at the Sun Asia Ocean World aquarium awhile ago but instead, most of them had plenty of room to roam in natural looking surroundings. Of course, the price we paid for that was having to walk long distances to see them all but it was well worth it. In spite of the fact that the animal habitats were large, they were set up in such a way that we were able to see most of the animals easily. I was especially impressed with the viewing platform at the giraffe exhibit. Though I’ve seen giraffes in many zoos over the years, I’ve never been able to look at one eye to eye before!

I was able to cross an important item off my unwritten China bucket list early in the day when I came face to face and hand to paw with a giant panda! Of course, there was plexiglass between us but it was an amazing moment! Those of you who know me well know that I love teddy bears and this was a real live one! If that was all I’d seen at the zoo today, I would have gone away happy! Thankfully, we visited the panda exhibit in the morning before the crowds got too thick. The first two pandas that we spotted were relaxing some distance away but the third one was closer. As I stopped to watch him, he walked right up to the glass in front of me, sat up on his haunches and put his paws on the glass! It was love at first sight and I told Richard and the boys that if they wanted to see the rest of the zoo, they might have to drag me away! They waited patiently while I watched my new friend unwrap and eat his Dragon Boat Festival zongzi. Unlike the ones we had for supper on Sunday night, his weren’t filled with glutinous rice though but something more palatable to pandas. We also watched him munch on some bamboo, a panda’s favourite food.

Eventually, I had to leave, of course. There were hundreds of other animals to see including many other kinds of bears. They were housed in the Fierce Beast Area of the zoo but the grizzly pictured below looked anything but fierce!

Springtime has obviously brought many new babies to the zoo. Some of them were on exhibit in the Little Animal Village and Nursery Center but most were with their mothers in the regular exhibits. We saw bear cubs, tiger cubs, and baby monkeys of many varieties just to name a few.

The zoo is divided into two sections. We spent most of the day touring the larger Safari Park on the west side of Bai Yun Mountain. After waiting in line for almost an hour in the middle of the afternoon, we took a cable car 1 200 metres over the mountain to the older Stable Breeding Park area. There was less to see there but the cable car ride was well worth it for the spectacular views of the coastline on the west side and the city on the east.

According to the brochure that guided our steps today, the operation philosophy of Dalian Forest Zoo is to produce happiness. It certainly did that for me today!