Take Off the Rose Colored Glasses

I fell in love with China and its people. As I have written, everyone was polite and helpful (someone who likes the "straight-talk" would say they are intimidated and know their place.) Both of these things are true. The Chinese government is trying to keep control of more than a billion people, people who are no longer hidden from the real world. The government blocks Facebook and Google and other social tools, but the Internet is still rampant with information that leaks into the homes of a very diverse culture that embraces a capitalistic culture and is eager to learn about the world.

China has 302 living languages, 276 indigenous. They are called "dialects" rather than languages...not accurate! The national language is Mandarin since 1913 and schools are required to teach that. We were told many times in our tours about the indigenous people and how they are given extra points to get into colleges or get special privileges, etc. The Hans, the largest group in China, is somewhat jealous of this, much like our white folks are angry that minorities get special treatment.  They also have discrimination issues between the various religions.  (Click on the photos for a larger view.)

On our visit to a local family (a friend of a friend), my sister-in-law had an app on her phone and we were able to communicate with about 80% accuracy.  It was fun and certainly helped as we had to take the local bus to their home and also to the restaurant!

The greatest variety in people is seen at the temples and tourist areas.  This is also the place you see more police and military keeping the peace(?).

Our tour was full of shows in cheesy costumes and basic folk dancing celebrating the diversity and the history of the country. They reminded me a little of our American Indians who used to do traditional shows years ago.

This post has gotten a little long, so I will talk about our final days and visit in Hong Kong next, since they are in the news so much these days.

Did I ruin your appetite?

Perhaps somewhere in the world there are people who do not like Chinese food, but I have not yet met them. We really enjoyed all our meals even though we were ready for something different at the end of the three-week-long trip. Perhaps NOT wanting to eat something as different as some of the photos I took at a local food market below:

Stomatopods--one of the most ancient of creatures

Grubs and chiles!  Yum!

Wondering what these long caterpillar-like insects are.  Once again with chiles.

Ah, something familiar, squid tentacles ready to BBQ.

The famous durian that tastes better than it smells and is illegal to have in some apartments.

Candied fruit for dessert.  These tiny apples were everywhere including on a plate in our hotel room.

Some Yak cheese, hard and a little sweet.  Would you like some with your rice wine or Chinese beer?

Huge grapes and some persimmons?  These did look good.

I have omitted the Peking dinner, and maybe will get around to that sometime in the future.

Just the Highspots

With three weeks to tour a country (the Chinese land area is about 2.2% bigger than the United States, 3.5 million square miles) and we did get to see all the high spots that are on many tourists' bucket lists and I would like to share.

We visited two monasteries, one for monks and another for nuns.  These are the nuns below who allowed us to wander through their meeting before lunch.  We saw lots of yak butter candles and monks debating.

I just love that whimsical face in the lower right!

We visited the museum with the Bronze Age bells that were buried in 443 BCE and re-discovered in 1978. For the whole story if you are a musical history buff, go to the link. While we did not get to hear the original bells played, we did get a very nice concert using their exact replicates. It was most pleasing to the ears.

We also visited the very impressive Tomb of the Terracotta Warriors.  Much larger than I thought and still ongoing in its exploration and reconstruction of tiny pieces.

We did not visit the Panda Preserve but did visit the Beijing Zoo where the Giant Panda was so over all the fame that he gets.  I did learn that they have to use porn films of other Pandas in heat to get those in the zoo or those in the preserve to be interested in the opposite sex.  No wonder they are endangered.

We toured the large Tienanmen Square and the palaces in the back through the gates.  One of my readers asked about the pollution and there were many days that we could not see into the distance.  Above you can see one of the days.  I was surprised how isolated from high rises this square was.

We hiked to the top of the Winter Palace of the Dalai Lama who is now a refugee in India due to his extreme and loyal following.  The air in Lhasa has only 68% of the oxygen of the air I have here at sea level.  It took me 48 hours before my head felt that it was not floating above my shoulders or that I could walk without looking like I had downed three margaritas in fifteen minutes.

We also walked the Great Wall of China during a time that the crowds were not too crazy!  That took some effort and I am glad I did it at my age now!  I barely got my mind around it and really think you have to backpack the area for a bit to really understand its importance and size.

I see my readers have now fallen asleep, so I will put writing about this trip to rest for now.  Someday I may talk about our wonderful food experiences and a Peking dinner with some friends of friends.  Thanks for allowing me to reminisce my opportunity.

Rural Contrasts

In the cities, the people were younger, looked more professional, or looked as though they were students. As we moved into the more rural areas of China we were able to see a broader contrast of people..both the younger and older...much like the United States.

We visited a rural school that is sponsored by the cruise line and that was a lovely experience. We each were "assigned" a first grader to work with on English for about 15 minutes. My little gal was very shy and it took lots of drawing and hand motions to bring her out.  The school was very rustic and there was no example of technology.  A big contrast with our rural elementary schools.

The teacher was dressed very professionally and kept a tight reign on the little ones.  There were marks on her desk where she had banged the ruler with passion. I can imagine her in her house getting ready for this visit  by a group of old, rich, Americans. Chinese teachers can get credits toward further education if they teach for some time in rural areas.

Automobiles are expensive and hard to come by.   Getting a license involves a lottery and your license plate allows you to drive on the streets only certain days! There are many cars on the streets, but most people travel by motorcycles or motorcycle versions of transport or via bicycle.  Streets were crazily crowded, but I saw no accidents in the three weeks of my birds-eye view from buses.  I saw only one car with a dent. When there was a problem with two drivers I saw it handled with moderation and politeness, and usually finished before the authorities could arrive!

Chinese are very Zen about their lives.  It was not unusual to see someone playing jazz in the park.  There are always groups doing Tai Chi in the early mornings before work in the city parks.  I did see a few beggars, but they were severely handicapped in all cases, missing arms or legs or being blind.

These gentlemen greeted us on our walk toward one of the many pagodas we visited. Go ahead and caption it, or tell me what you think they are thinking...

The First Night

For me it is ALWAYS about the people...at least that is my focus when I travel. In China, the week of October 1 to October 7 is their national holiday for celebrating the formation of the government of the PRC (Peoples Republic of China), and this year was the 70th anniversary of that celebration. We arrived in Shanghai on the night of the 6th! The streets were full of tourists from all over rural China, rather than locals!

The lobby of our hotel had a crystal eagle to celebrate the 70th anniversary.

We had been dropped off by our guide with plans to meet the next day, so we settled in our room and then decided to leave the hotel to head to the "Bund" which was just across the street. The Bund is the walkway along the river and we were told there was a light show every hour on the hour. Unbeknownst to us, we were going the wrong way as we left the hotel and could not cross the street which was just in front of our hotel. You can see the light show in the distance and we were going counter traffic.  You cannot see that there were many police and some military blocking crosswalks and directing people around. We had to walk about 4 blocks our of our way, take a left for 3 blocks, go down another half mile and eventually follow the crowd. We did finally get across the street!

The people were mostly families or millennials with sometimes a grandparent or two which they protected. Everyone was calm and polite even though we were crammed into small spaces. They all politely took their photos and then left space for those of us in the back to get our pictures.

When we were done and realized we had better get some sleep before our morning walk of the city, we started to head back.  To our surprise guards blocked every single shortcut we wanted to take.  We reached the street to the side of our hotel after getting lost and saved by a young Chinese lady with her phone map, and we still were not allowed to cross directly into the front door of the hotel!  I took a chance arguing with one of the policemen and showing him my hotel key card, but he refused to budge.  He looked all of nineteen, as did most of them.  There were lines of young men standing just a few feet apart insuring that we still had to walk another two blocks to wend our way finally back to our hotel.  I saw other elderly Chinese ladies giving the police a piece of their mind as well.  I did not take photos of the guards as that is frowned upon.

We finally made it to our side and were so glad to get back into the hotel.  During the whole experience, jet-lagged and disoriented, I truly felt very safe.  We later learned by our guide that these strict walking patterns had been put in place two years ago due to a crowd rush that killed 100 people!!   So much for my naive view of crowd safety.

A First Summary of an Epic Journey

We left on October 6 and returned on October 26. During this time we cruised, bussed and walked a large chunk of China. The map below covers our trip, except we traveled the exact opposite direction beginning with Shanghai. We also added an extension to the trip by flying to Guilin and Hong Kong shown to the south of the map below. We will probably never be able to return, so we went "whole hog".

There was little jet lag on our part upon arrival and we seemed to be able to join right in. The schedule was heavy. Half-day and full-day activities were the normal routine except for some of the days on the cruise part.

First impressions: China is large, not just in size, but in population. I will not bore you with the differences in municipalities, prefecture-level cities, and county-level cities. Since China is able to move millions of people and build a city in a year or less, these various levels of the population tend to run into each other physically. Shanghai, where we landed, is over 26 million people! Beijing where we began our end, has 6 beltways or city "rings" around it! More than 100 cities are over a million in population. China's government owns all the land and it is leased by the builders or the people who live on it in 100-year contracts. We felt the pulse of China at each stop. Even our guide would say his visit to certain areas was visibly different than the last time.

Below, just a hint of the buildings from different stops!!

The above pictures are a bit deceptive as there were many more I took with building cranes everywhere like long-legged grasshoppers. 

There was a discrepancy on whether the buildings were filled or awaiting tenants. China builds ahead of the curve.  We did not get to see inside the buildings but I will later write a post about two very different home visits we made. The apartments are 400 to 700 square feet in size housing families of 3 and 4. We saw laundry hanging on balconies, meaning there are no dryers in them. We were told by several people that the kitchens are quite small and therefore Chinese eat out most of the time!

The next post will be our first night of arrival and gentle chaos.

And She Is Off, In More Ways Than One!

Only one larva crawling across the pantry ceiling this morning.  They will have three weeks to reproduce and restore, but I have done the best that I can.  This pantry is the cleanest and best organized it has ever been. I will make every effort in the future to not overstock.

I have made garlic chive salt from the scapes that I cut last week.  This should be a stimulating spice in the cold days of winter.

And I am packed for three weeks across the vast country of China.  I have not figured out the app situation, but maybe I will just be offline most of the time.  I think I have packed pretty efficiently.

zài jiàn !

The Devil and the 10 Details

Circling the wagons?

The list of detail things to be done before our trip is endless. I have a house sitter who came by two days ago when we did a walk-through and today emailed to ask when she could pick up the keys...which I GAVE her two days ago! Hope she finds them.

Our tax man is helping us with a delayed filing and has spent today attempting to send us some additional forms to sign through an encrypted email, but each time we only get one of the two emails. Finally, he is going to just send a PDF and have us physically scan and sign tonight.

I have a bag full of charger cords for Kindle, phone, and camera batteries. I have to sort through all my various plugs for China and add all that weight.

I will be in the high cold mountains of Tibet for two days as well as tropical Hong Kong for two days with mainland travel in between.  What a crazy wardrobe I will need.

Hubby's laptop died last week and he is learning to use the new one this week, which means I am routinely interrupted helping him learn it.  I wish I was a more patient person.

I have worked for two hours trying to download WeChat as the only China-friendly app for communication on my phone with my fellow travelers texting and been totally unsuccessful.  My "account" is now blocked.

My wristwatch died and I do not like the Fitbit as it gets crazy with changing the times via satellite, so I had to rush out and buy a new watch this morning.

I have gotten an invasion of moths in my pantry and each time I think I have found the culprit: some old barley? a plastic container of mung beans? or the really old box of graham crackers? the little larva appear a day later along the ceiling!  At least my pantry is the cleanest it has ever been.

I have no ability to buy Yuan in the boonies but hope we can exchange once we get there.  It seems that our new credit card bills had been mailed to our physical address and not our P.O. Box and thus we were in payment default and the two new cards were being blocked for use!  Another half-hour at the bank has now corrected that little anomaly.

My SIL recommended we use compression stockings since our flight is 15.5 hours long after the transfer.  I have two more days...so still thinking about that.

(It does not help that every time I turn on the TV that old man is in his front yard in his underwear shouting at everyone.  I look forward to getting away from this circus.)

Two Weekends in a Row

Some of us elders have the luxury of hanging out with Millennials.  I had back-too-back late 30 and early 40 somethings for two weekends in a row last week.  I did manage to talk myself out of a food panic.  I always want to be the gourmet/original/healthy/luscious cook when folks come.  Yes, I  am an  idiot.  Yes, it is a very bad habit.  This time I took a deep breath and decided to do something simple.  In one instance it helped that we had fresh crab for a central dish, something not easily obtained without money and something not all that hard to cook.

I took one of the couples, who are relatives, to a discount store of which we are members where they could do some shopping with savings.  They got to the candy aisle which was full of bags of candy for the distant Halloween holiday.  This involved a lot of discussion over which type of candy and how many bags.  It went on for some time.  Finally I went over to the  couple and asked why this was an issue.  The wife said, "Our neighbor across the street has caramel apples and hot apple cider and the kids walk on by our door even though  we are sitting outside.  We have to get better candy."

Yes.  In the grand scheme of things this is such a sad  situation.  Only in a first world country and in an upper middle class neighborhood is sweets giving so competitive!  I would be mad about having lots of  leftover candy and would have just turned off my porch light and  not  given out candy!  Such a bit of silliness.

Most of the rest of the weekend with them was boating and beaching which could help them unwind from stressful jobs.

The second couple who came the very next weekend brought along a lovely two-year-old girl who, while having one or two "terrible two" tantrums, was a delight to watch and share activities with.  This couple is just friends.

The husband of the little girl is originally from Hong Kong and so I was able to ask him to write up some notes for my husband's dietary restrictions during our upcoming visit to China.  He was able to write in the Chinese characters for both Northern and Southern China.  Fortunately, hubby's dietary restriction is not life threatening as it may be with others!

The husband of this couple also prepared a lovely salmon dish for our first night.  They brought ALL the necessary ingredients.   The biggest surprise was he did not have to ask me where any particular tool or ingredient might be in the kitchen.  My hubby can rarely make something without calling me  back a few times to  find something in the kitchen.  I was left to sip my glass of  wine and watch the toddler put together  one of my many children's puzzles.

There was so much more I learned and could say about these two visits, but I have rambled on  long  enough for now. 

This next week I face a long list of things  to check and do before our flight on Friday.

HeadStart

My days have been filled with company and volunteer work and a few meetings. While I know that being active is very important in retirement, I am looking forward to some downtime before my 22-day trip that is also filled with stuff!

This post should go on my other blog, but I just posted something seasonal there, so I will write about it here.

Reptiles lay eggs in many different areas of the wild.   I have seen them move the gravel from the side of a busy road to lay their eggs.  I have come across them laying eggs at the edge of a hiking path in the forest.  This year one of our box turtles decided that the compost pile would be perfect with its summer warmth. The eggs usually hatch in late August and early September. Hubby was flipping that good earthy compost a few weeks ago when he found this

He is a scientist after all and realized he had torn an egg and induced an egg hatching before its time! Thus a section of my kitchen was immediately converted into a hatchery for one lone box turtle. He avoided turning the rest of the pile for another two weeks!

He brought in the aquarium and filled it with some of the compost.  I got a timed light to replicate the sun.  We added a small dish of water to keep the aquarium moist.

We had some watermelon and put a little of that in the aquarium/terrarium while waiting for the turtle to hatch.  Days went by, but we could see slight movement if we touched the egg, so we knew it was still viable (alive).  Finally, just before the visit of the first grandson, the little guy/gal shoved its way out of the eggshell and crawled to the watermelon and ate!

Hubby cut up a worm or two a day later, and turtle also liked that.  I was told by a friend that they liked grubs but never seemed to find those in our dry soils after weeks of little rain.  We also added pawpaws which are ripening in our woods now, and that was a favorite.  He still had his little egg tooth!

He did well for the weeks that we kept him, and it was hard to let him go out into the world of snakes, fox and whatever else might want to eat him.  We put him back near the compost with a little food, and maybe next spring he will return!  We will not recognize him and I doubt he will recognize us.