5. China

Sun, Oct 5, 2008 Dalian, China

Two months ago, we made several frustrating trips to downtown Ottawa to deal with the Chinese Embassy for visas to be able to enter The People’s Republic of China. Eventually, we succeeded, and spent $100 each to secure them. Today, like sheep, we sat at our assembly spots around the ship, and were delayed from 8:15am to 9:15am for the Chinese bureaucrats to agree to admit 2,700 passengers from Diamond Princess into China. And this was faster than normally, according to some sources. It is hard to understand the roadblocks Chinese officials put in our way to prevent us spending money in China!

Dalian is a new city, just 100 years old from when it was a fishing village. In the last ten years, it has seen explosive growth as a manufacturing and exporting city. Many heritage buildings reflect the style of former occupier, Russia, but the city is laid out on the Paris model of very wide major avenues, large roundabouts, and broad boulevards. It is scrupulously clean, and obviously economically booming: skyscrapers are everywhere, the architecture is interesting, public gardens look lush, cars are abundant and new. The place looks prosperous, although there are several visual throwbacks from time to time. But now we are getting into the realm of BIG cities: 6.5M Chinese call Dalian home – 2 to 3 times the population of Toronto in the same area. There is some major manufacturing here, but in industrial zones on the outskirts of the city, so the air is cleaner than most cities, it is reported.

We had a beautiful sunny 70 degree day, and took a Princess-organized guided tour to various sites around the city, including the Modern History Museum which promoted Dalian’s amazing growth in, especially, the past 30 years. We also visited Xinghai Park, and its monuments celebrating 100 years of the city: the 1000 citizen’s bronzed footprints, and an ornately carved column. Later, on our own, we explored some streets in search of a post office and a flower market; we eventually found the former (open Sunday) but not the latter. Surprisingly, we have yet to see exotic flowers on this trip, other than on the ship.

Tomorrow is the end of the cruise for 1,000 guests on the ship, mostly British, and many new acquaintances will be departing, including Russell and Louise from Australia. It is a perverse thrill to be staying on board while others are wheeling their carry-on luggage off the ship!














Mon, Oct 6, 2008 Xingang/Beijing, China

If we thought Dalian was a big city, the frame of reference had just changed. Today, we entered the largest port we have ever seen. Before docking, we glided slowly past mile after mile of major port facilities. Xingang is the port for the city of Tianjin (metro population 10 million) which is the gateway 3 hours down the road to Beijing (formerly Peking), the capital of China, and a city of 12.5 million! Since we are returning to Beijing later on our trip, we elected to spend this port stop on a Princess tour to visit the Great Wall of China outside Beijing, and not see Beijing itself.

The Great Wall of China has been chosen the most remarkable man-made structure on Earth. Building began in 200 BC, under the first Emperor of China, Qin (which is pronounced chin, and hence China) Shi Huang, who unified all warring states in the region for the first time, and established the Qin Dynasty. The extensive remnants of the Wall that exist today were constructed by some 3 million men during the Ming Dynasty, in the 1400s, as a defensive barrier against the Mongolian hordes to the north.

The Wall is quite unbelievable. Made of stone and rock, it is 15-25 feet high, 20 feet wide at the bottom, narrowing to 15 feet wide at the top (wide enough for two horsemen to ride abreast), traversing extremely rough and steep terrain, and extending 4,000 miles east to west. 4,000 miles! We marvel here at man’s perpetual ingenuity and determination to have protected his own kind with unimaginable feats, just as did the original Venetians in their southern migration and establishment of Venice as refuge from the northern barbarians in their part of the world. We feel encouraged that modern man will be similarly capable of overcoming present day challenges to our survival.

After more than 2 hours of negotiating between Princess and petty Chinese bureaucrats, we boarded busses and were off on a 2 hour ride though the countryside to a restored section of Wall called Huangyaguan. This is a UNESCO world heritage site, and is breathtaking. We climbed the 25 steps to mount the wall and started to walk along the slight incline. 100 yards later this incline turned to a few dozens 4 inch steps, then became 12 inch steps, and most of our fellow passengers flagged and retired to rest. Ahead, the risers became 16 inches each – maybe 50 or 75 of then before leveling off for a while. Then, the same again. It was a tremendous workout, and we had barely covered a kilometer. The vistas were astounding on this perfect-weather day, and pix are attached. This was the highlight of the trip so far. We could not conceive of the labour necessary to bring the construction materials to these heights. The loss of life of those building the wall has it referred to as the longest grave yard in the world. We don’t know if they actually did bury the deceased workers under the construction as they say they did.

By the way, we must at least mention Chinese toilets… They are different than western toilets, as they call them here. They are everywhere. And, maybe that’s enough said…

Back on the Diamond Princess, things have changed. 1,000 mainly older British folks have left at this port, and 600 German-speakers, and 250 Russian-speakers are among the 1,000 replacements heading for Bangkok with us. The dynamic now is a louder, busier ship. Ahead, we have 2 glorious days at sea.




Tues, Oct 7, 2008 At sea

Two more sea days. Wonderful. One of them is a formal-dress evening – we’ll have a total of 9 during this cruise. Here we are pictured during one of them, with friends clockwise from Colleen: Russ, Sharon, Hugo, Steph, Peter, and Louise. We are a truly international bunch: Sharon & Hugo live in Germany and Tenerife, Russ & Louise are Australians from Melbourne, and Steph & Peter are from Toronto.

And although we don’t go to the big production shows much anymore, they still have a different one almost every night.



Thurs, Oct 9, 2008 Shanghai, China

We entered the Port of Shanghai this morning, and docked before we awoke. This is the biggest city in China, at 17 million people – ½ the population of Canada – and in the top 10 list for biggest in the world. It is also one of the biggest ports in the world, extending some 40 miles from where we entered the harbour to where we docked. Ships are everywhere. Again, because we will return to Shanghai in a month or so with our China tour, we elected to go elsewhere on this port stop, and chose to take a Princess tour to the City of Suzhou – pronounced Sue-Joe. The old city part is another UNESCO World Heritage Site, famous for its canals and Chinese classical gardens.

With less immigration delay than in former China entry points, our tour bus proceeded through dense morning traffic on a freeway through an endless landscape of concrete towers and smog. Imagine the respiratory disease of people living in this environment.

A 2 ½ hour drive brought us to Suzhou, population 3 million. There is a lot of water around Suzhou, and part of our excursion included a 45 minute boat tour on part of the Grand Canal – promoted as the longest man-made canal in the world – and some of the minor canals. It clearly showed us that Suzhou was not the picturesque site it had appeared to be in internet photos. Filthy water, crumbling buildings, and endless lines of laundry hung out to dry along water streets of tiny, poor homes. Did the local peasants not have indoor plumbing? It appeared not. Many residents were doing their laundry in the river, beating it with sticks as our boats glided past. Other locals were carrying pails to the canal along with their mops and squeegees to dump, rinse, and pick up clean (?) water. We knew this happened in India, but here in a UNESCO site? To further alarm us, people were also hanging their fishing poles in this same water; were they then going to eat the fish? Where did they go to the bathroom? We closed the boat window beside us even though it was a warm day. It was interesting, but the squalor of this part of real China was apparent.

A further 15 minute bus ride through Suzhou brought us to an amazing Chinese silk embroidery factory where artisans stitched - before our eyes - pictures as in a tapestry, with silk thread barely discernible to the naked eye, and composed pictures that looked as if they had been painted. They were utterly beautiful, and we had a difficult time resisting purchasing. This was a tourist haven, and if we do buy, it will be somewhere removed from such an obvious tourist trap. The problem here, though, is because of their entirely different alphabet, you cannot yourself read or locate what you want elsewhere, but can only rely on a Chinese English speaker to assist you. Our guide, of course, was motivated for us to buy there because we think she received a commission.

The Chinese buffet lunch followed, in an upscale Suzhou hotel. It was interesting and delicious. The fish eaters in our midst did not laugh when I asked them if they thought the fish had been caught in the canal we had just travelled.

Our afternoon was spent at the most famous of the famed Suzhou gardens: the Humble Administrator’s Garden, who, judging by appearances, lacked sincerity about his humbleness. The place, dating from the Ming Dynasty of the 1500s, was magnificent in its classical design, size, and cost to maintain, without even considering its construction price. We wish we could have reallocated some of our canal time, and spent it all at this garden of lotus ponds, bonsai, small pavilions for meditation, pagodas, brooks, rocks and flowers. We learned that the main principle in a Chinese garden is design, and it definitely was apparent here. Dozens of art students – male and female – were on the grounds amid the tourists, recreating the beauty on their canvasses.

We hated to leave, but we had to hurry back for the Shanghai Acrobat Show that Princess brought on board - utterly fantastic - followed by another 5 course dinner in good company, and a classical quartet in the lounge before bed, as the ship departed for another full day at sea. Another wonderful day!