16. The Terracotta Warriors

Fri, Nov 14 Xian

Prior to the advent of power drilling equipment to tap underground aquifers for wells, humans dug down with picks and shovels until they had success. As the aspiring well progressed, the walls were lined with spirally descending, interlocked, and cemented stones to maintain the integrity of the deepening hole. Such was the activity in a poor famer’s field, in 1974, just outside the ancient city of Xian, or more properly, Xi’an - pronounced She-Ann – and meaning Western Peace.

Xian is one of the oldest settled areas of China, with 3,100 years of recorded history. At various times it was even a dynastic capital, and currently is just a medium sized city with a population of a mere 8.5 million.

In any event, 2 labourers were excavating a well when they came across many shards of what looked like pottery, and then as they dug deeper, looked like cast figures! Work was stopped and a friend at the local university was consulted. This serendipitous finding turned out to be one of the top tourist attractions in China today: the famous Terracotta Warrior Army.

The egomaniacal first Emperor, Qin (pronounced Chin… [which led to “China”]… 221-210 BC) ordered the creation of an entire army of life sized warriors to protect him and help him rule in the afterlife. One can see that this would have been no small task, and historians have estimated 700,000 craftsmen spent many years working on the project, since some 8,000 of the figures have been uncovered so far, in 5 pits spread over an area of several acres. In addition, there are 500 horses, and more than 100 chariots among the soldiers.

Seeing it in person is staggering. The warrior site has been covered, on location, by an arena-like roof. Inside, rank upon rank upon rank of solders, archers, horses and officers - each with a distinct, unique face – line the trenches in which they were initially placed. It is really an incredible spectacle, and worth the flight to Xian.

The cultural treasures we saw (versus what the 2 original well-diggers saw) represents a gargantuan restoration by the People’s Republic of China, since most of the 8000 figures had been vandalized during (apparently) the time of the second and third Emperors. As we left we wondered how many other farmers over the centuries had encountered other “treasures” while digging, but had less curiosity to seek answers about their findings?

Travelling time and the site visit consumed most of the day, but we did squeeze in a visit to a gift and lacquerware factory beforehand, and an hour in the Shaanxi (the province) Museum after.

One thing we haven't mentioned yet is the amazing number of KFC restaurants. They are everywhere... like Starbucks in America. 7-11's are omnipresent, too. The amount of deep fried food the Chinese ate surprised us. Why are they so thin?

Our bus passed a particular corner in downtown Xian where workers come to pick up day jobs. We saw dozens of men armed with the tools of their trade - paint rollers, manual lawn mowers, etc. Xian residents know the location, our guide said, and come by when a particular trade is required.

That night, the group attended a marvelous cultural folkloric show called the Tang Dynasty. The Tang period was roughly 600-900 AD, and is considered one of the high points of Chinese civilization in terms of cosmopolitan culture, peacefulness, and stability – a civil culture, (while Europe, meanwhile, was enduring the Dark Ages). Xian was the capital, and the arts like poetry, painting, cartography, printing, and general scholarship all flourished.

We could not believe the value we were experiencing on this Smartours trip!

15. China's Capital Beijing

Tues, Nov 11 Beijing

This morning we headed off by plane to the capital of the People’s Republic of China, Beijing. Our overall guide, Chen, had organized all 24 suitcases plus his so that they went to the airport before us and were put through the group check-in prior to our arrival. How lovely to walk into an airport unburdened by luggage, and quickly clear security, and arrive at the gate just about boarding time. THIS guide knows how to organize!

The short flight north to Beijing was smooth and efficient, and we landed in the renowned Beijing smog, which was so dense we could barely see across the tarmac!

Beijing was cold. At 39 degrees N, it is pretty close to Ottawa's 45 degree latitude, so we shivered.

There has been settlement here since 400 BC, but it has been the capital since 1421, when one of the Ming Dynasty Emperors constructed the Forbidden City and relocated there from the former capital, Nanjing. Beijing has 12.5 million residents. It is large and dense – although only a paltry 900 people per km2 compared to Hong Kong’s 6,000! - and is strikingly manicured for at least the part that we toured. Furthermore, there is no laundry on the balconies, as promised.

Beautifying the city in preparation for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games truly transformed it, according to Chen, who resides here. Parks and green belts now abound, and everything is orderly and relatively clean… except for the amazing smog... and it is very heavy. You could barely see the sun. Chen told us it was the smoke from farmers burning their stubble, and that might have been part of it, but China’s industrial engine is still in overdrive after the Olympic break 3 months ago, in August, despite the oncoming global slowdown.

The city is full of highlights, especially after 10 years of preparation to host the Olympics. Over the course of 3 days, we journeyed out from our lovely Capital Hotel (2 blocks away from massive Tiananmen Square) to visit the Summer Palace of the Empress Dowager, to do some prospecting for deals at a Jade factory, a pearl factory, and a Cloisonné factory, to loiter in a cashmere market (oh my…), to check out the sad pandas captive at the nasty zoo, and to visit 3 more sites on the list of 100 Places to See before you Die: the Temple of Heaven, the Forbidden City, and the Great Wall of China (a second time for us, but in a different location: Yuyongguan Pass). There is so much here of which the Chinese can be proud.

The Great Wall was even better this time although our visibility was not as good. Although still very smoggy, we clamoured up a few thousand steps to marvel at this feat of human engineering between 500 BC and 1600 AD.

The Forbidden City is a magnificent engineering creation, too. Constructed by an estimated 1 million workers between 1406 and 1420, this awe-inspiring colossus served as the Chinese imperial palace from the Ming Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty - the "Last Emperor" - who abdicated in 1912. That is five centuries, and 24 Emperors, as the ceremonial and political centre of Chinese government. Today, it is a huge tourist draw, and part of it is home to the Palace Museum and its famous Ming collection - half of which was moved out during the Japanese invasion in WW2, and later evacuated to Taiwan in 1947 under orders by Chiang Kai-shek, whose Kuomintang was losing the Chinese Civil War. Mainland China is still aggravated about that, but since we were in Taiwan earlier on this voyage, we have seen the entire Palace collection!
Now the Forbidden City… Wow.

It is the world's largest surviving palace complex, and “complex” it is. With increasingly nested (and sacred) inner sanctums, in a vast [3,000 x 2,500 ft] space of its own, preceded by the also vast Tiananmen Square, all of which dominates central Beijing, it has long inspired reverence and fear. No one was allowed in any of the layered courtyards or the 980 surviving buildings without the Emperor’s permission, and very few individuals got into the innermost core… except the many concubines, of course.

Our group toured it to the point of exhaustion, in dense crowds at times, but staying near to one another “… like sticky rice” – Guide Chen’s favorite expression. (No, his second favorite; he would chuckle or grin as he talked about having “… greased the palms” to slide our group through congested situations, entrance points, hotels, and airports, etc).

The Temple of Heaven, another graceful complex several miles away but still in Beijing, was also constructed in 1420, and was the official site of Emperor-led annual ceremonies of prayers to Heaven for good harvest.

On a less architectural note, when in China (just as in Thailand), you have to eat noodles - so we do that at one of the million noodle restaurants.

And when in Beijing, specifically, you have to eat Peking Duck – and we do that as a group event one evening, too. Video below:

Beyond the tourist magnet sites above, Beijing is full of things to do. Among the recommended are:

• watching seniors practice Tai Chi in the morning,
  
  
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• taking a rickshaw ride through the old part of the city (known as the Hutons),
  
  
  

• fending off - or bargaining with - the ever-present hawkers, and
  
  
  
  
  
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• listening to glass shatter (almost) at a screechy tourist-oriented production of Peking Opera..

All – except the last one – were entertaining and worthy of the recommendation. Apparently young Chinese are not interested in the Peking Opera, and we felt a bond with them!

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  We concluded Beijing with a drive-by of the Olympic facilities including the Bird's Nest and the Water Cube. Impressive city and a showpiece for China’s emergence as a superpower.

14 Shanghai

Sat, Nov 8 Shanghai, China

After an afternoon reward flight on Air Canada partner Shanghai Air, and we transfered to downtown on the amazing Maglev train, which in 2004 was the first (and still may be the only) commercial high-speed magnetic levitation line in the world.

It was a 30 km/18 mile journey that took 7 minutes and 20 seconds to complete. There was an odometer above the door in each of the 3 or 4 cars on this bullet train, and all of the “tourists” had cameras ready as the train accelerated to 350 km/h (220 mph) in the first 2 minutes, and then cranked it up to 431 km/h (268 mph) as a maximum speed. We blurred past cars on the adjacent highway, and for the 2 turns on the route, we were banked up like bikes in a velodrome! It was a terrific “thrill” ride for a mere 50 yuan (US$7.27), but not really practical, location-wise, since we still had a half hour taxi ride ($10) to get to our hotel in this gigantic city.

Our hotel, the Fudan Crowne Plaza, was a beautiful 5 star establishment - which augured well for a high accommodation standard on the rest of this trip. Tomorrow the rest of the tour group would arrive (tired) on the long flights from LA and New York City.

For orientation purposes, Shanghai is midway between Beijing in the north and Hong Kong in the south. It is near the mouth of the mighty Yangtze River, but is actually located on a more navigable major tributary called the Huangpu, and, accordingly, the city grew to early prominence as a strategic port location. In fact, “Shang Hai” means “on the sea”. It was one of the five Chinese cities forced to be “opened” to foreign trade by the 1842 Treaty of Nanking, following the Opium War between China and victorious England. Checking in at 18.5 million inhabitants (the population of Ontario), the city is one of the largest in China, and is considered the fastest growing metropolis in the world.

The next day started out overcast and cool. Our China journey commenced with introductions and a bus tour of the famous central downtown area known as the Bund. This area is the old financial hub, and is an area along the river where dozens of grand and now historical buildings once accommodated the major European banks and trading houses of pre-WW2 Shanghai.

Across the river is the new financial epicenter of Chinese (and Asian) commerce and finance: an area called Pudong, which 15 years ago we were told were fields of rice paddies. Today it is glitzy, astonishing architecture, all emblematic of China’s rocket-ride to being the world’s fastest growing economy.

We visited the lovely Yu Yuan City Gardens, and performed a dramatic cat rescue!

We spotted a tiny kitten stumbling along a crowded street near the Gardens, scooped him up, and after some arm-twisting of our guides, we transported him by taxi to a caring and empathetic vet who promised to treat and find a home for this helpless, beautiful creature. (We later found out that the month old scrawny feline had a broken rib, an eye infection, worms, and malnourishment, but with vet Stephen’s intervention, he eventually recovered completely and a few weeks later was adopted by an English speaking Chinese couple with whom we have communicated by email! Little Singa, as we call him, is one fortunate little creature.)

China has brought the world many inventions that are celebrated in Chinese culture. The four greatest are touted as the Compass, Gunpowder, Paper, and Printing (both moveable type and block). These four discoveries have had an enormous impact on the development of Chinese civilization,and a far-ranging global impact about which the Chinese proudly keep reminding tourists.

You really notice how many people there are in Chinese cities. It is not just in the population number, but in the feel of the city. It is dense with humans. We see wonderfully creative bicyclists carting huge and interesting loads on their two-wheelers. Imagine this being tolerated on busy roadways in North Ameica!

We also saw that every day is laundry day; it streamed from extension poles out apartment windows and on balconies. Our guide, Chen, said this is only in southern China; Beijing won’t tolerate open laundry like this.

Silk fabric was also first developed in ancient China, evidently as early as 6000 BC. Many Chinese silk products are gorgeous works of art, and we briefly visited a silk factory and manage to squeeze in the purchase of a beautiful, lustrous silk duvet before taxiing off to deal with Singa.

We have already visited some wonderful museums (Taipei, especially; it will be hard to top that one), and we have now added the Shanghai Museum to the list. It is a sterling one, documenting huge achievements over several thousands of years in pottery, ceramics, brass, art and other skills. Suddenly, pot design incorporates handles, or a cylinder to pour liquids grows a spout; features taken for granted in modern times, but clever and useful in all time periods.

Visitors are struck by the imaginative architecture in Shanghai. Dramatic buildings are everywhere.

One night, Chen escorted our group to a performance by the world famous Shanghai acrobats in a (naturally) spectacular show, akin to Cirque du Soleil in which many of these acrobats have worked. The show was a definite improvement over dinner where Colleen ended up covered in spilled beer as our group hadn’t yet learned to keep table objects clear of the ubiquitous Chinese food turntable (lazy susan) with its serving pieces aiming to knock a kilter anything in its path, particularly liquids!

(Another video... click on the play arrow)

One final Shanghai adventure: Minutes before departing the Fudan Crowne Plaza Hotel, we made a last “visit” to an exquisite silk embroidery picture that we had been admiring in a hotel store. The merchant, knowing our tour group was imminently exiting, magically dropped the price, we bought it, and arranged for it to be shipped to Montreal by slow boat. (The shipping logistics turned out to be a magnitude more complicated than we envisioned, but that’s another story, and now the Chinese faces in our picture gaze back at us in our dining room as a reminder of the diversity of skill, and love of beauty, people throughout the world have).

We've had a wonderful, eye-opening 3 days in Shanghai, but now it was time to be off to explore the wonders of Beijing!

13. China Tour begins

Fri, Nov 7 Hong Kong, China

Now comes PART 3 of of our fabulous adventure: China!

We are primarily independent travellers, but today embarked on one of the very few "guided" tours we have ever taken, this time with a company called Smartours, out of New York. We had priced making our own arrangements to a couple of cities in mainland China, but the Smartours package - with 5 internal flights, a group coach in each city, 5 star hotels, most meals, some evenings of entertainment, and fully guided - was nearly the same price, (and endorsed by 2 sets of friends), so we grabbed it.

But first, we had to get from Phuket to Bangkok, to collect the 3 luggage bags we had stored at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi airport, then move it all to Hong Kong for storage there. Our China tour permits only ONE bag each on the internal China flights, and although it starts further north in Shanghai, it ends in Hong Kong, so we planned to leave all our excess luggage at the termination hotel while we wereaway. This time we had to store 5 bags!!

We were not in Hong Kong (or more specifically, Kowloon) for long. Our flights from Phuket to Bangkok (1 ½ hr + 4 hr wait), and Bangkok to Hong Kong 2 ½ hr + 1 hr into the hotel) meant we arrived in Kowloon after dark. The Regal Kowloon Hotel was a block off the harbour and in the middle of malls and stores… and a Starbucks. Good coffee is rare anywhere in Asia so far.

Our main task this night was the repacking exercise, leaving the hot weather clothes and the formal clothes behind, and preparing to survive with 1 bag each for the next 16 days of cooler China weather.

12. Phuket, Thailand

Fri, Nov 1 Phuket, Thailand

Two hours’ flight south of Chiang Mai, and part way down the narrow isthmus of Thailand that eventually becomes Malaysia, is probably the #1 resort destination in SE Asia: Phuket.
This is the biggest island in Thailand, with miles and miles of beautiful beaches, and hundreds of 1-star to 5-star hotels and resorts. The island is big, with a total area of 570 sq. mi, and from north to south (where shabby Phuket Town is located), is about 50 km by 20 km wide. The topography is mostly hilly to mountainous. Much of the island is covered by rubber and palm oil plantations, and either scrub or tropical forests

On Boxing Day, 2004, Phuket and other nearby areas on Thailand's western coast were devastated by the great tsunami we all remember. Almost all the major beaches on the west coast, sustained heavy damage, and waves destroyed several highly populated areas in the region, killing 5,300 people, plus tens of thousands more throughout the wider Asian region. Reportedly, 250 people died in Phuket Town alone, including foreigners, as well as possibly 1000 immigrant Burmese workers building new beach resorts. It took a full year before many damaged (plus the undamaged) resorts were back in business, and through 2005 life slowly returned to normal. In late 2006, Thailand finally installed tsunami-detection buoys around the Indian Ocean as part of a regional warning system.

For the next 7 days, our home will be Marriott’s Beach Villas Resort, a timeshare property into which we have traded a week of our ownership in Marriott’s Palm Desert California timeshare resort. It is a spectacular place, with very upscale facilities due to its physical integration with the 5 star JW Marriot Hotel on the same site. The only problem we see so far is that it is remote, on the northern part of the island, on a beautiful, undeveloped beach, 15 km from any non-Marriott restaurants, and even further to a grocery store. Roadside markets and Thai villages abound, of course, but tourists are never advised to buy food there.

Accordingly, we soon rented a car and entered the world of driving on the wrong side of the road, of weaving motorbikes, of people who pass on shoulders and who even drive in the wrong direction (day and night) on the shoulders! We have quickly learned that there are no police patrols on the highways or streets; instead, police set up highway checkpoints and catch violators there. So, the highways and secondary roads are freewheeling!

[Don't forget: you can double click on any pic to enlarge it].

This week is about relaxation and getting ready for the upcoming China marathon tour. But it is tough to relax when there are elephants on the beach to watch, feed, and ride, and interesting places on the island to seek out and explore. The weather is perfect here: 85 degrees and a gentle breeze, every day.

The beach is stunning, and the lapping seashore memorizing... and it is nearly empty day after day! We have made some new friends – Tamsin & Richard from Singapore, and Elly & Dave from England – and by the end of the week, we have dined with each of them a couple of times.

During the week, Barack Obama is elected, and the world breathes with new hope.

Day 5 turns out to be our highlight day, and one of the top experiences of our 3 month trip, so far. We take a John Gray Sea Kayaks Excursion. At noon, we are collected from our hotel and shortly after join about 20 others on a large tour boat that motors 60 minutes out into the calm waters of Phang Nga Bay – the bay that separates Phuket Island from the mainland to the east. Spectacular uplifted limestone mounds called karsts rise out of the water, towering above us. Three times during the next 6 hours, we get off the boat and into very stable kayaks to paddle into different sea level caves in these karsts, and into interior lagoons open to the sky.

[This is a video. Click play button]

The openings through which we have come can only be used at certain times; at high tide, they are submerged. At one point in the day, we suddenly encounter John Gray himself, the 70 yr old founder of the sea kayaking industry in Thailand. At another point, we all gather at the boat’s center table and handcraft 10 traditional Thai floating lanterns, called krathongs, from banana and lotus leaves and flowers.

An hour after a spectacular sunset, and wonderful buffet dinner on the boat, we descend into the kayaks once more and head for a last interior lagoon in the dark. Once inside the lagoon, we silently light the candles on our krathongs and set them afloat. What a glorious day and evening!

One more day of beach time and a beach massage, and the week was over. Memorable time. Really exotic resort. Want more of this!