There are no pics this week.

As some of you know, Glen was in the hospital for several days. He had an infection and needed I-V antibiotics. The other person in the hospital was Tony Sochurek. He had blood clots in his lungs. It was quite a surprise. We saw him at Circle Sunday and he was doing great. Tuesday he didn’t feel well. Wednesday he was in the hospital. Fortunately, both are doing well.

We had such a good time and learned so much on our China trip that we decided to do it again. We’ve signed up for a trip to Greece with Road Scholar. We’ll be traveling April 25 – May 11. The focus is on ancient Greece and Turkey (400 BCE – 500 CE).

I’ve given the first two sessions of my “Inside your router” seminar. It’s gone very well. I have about 20 residents involved. There’s one more session next Thursday (June 4). I tried writing the third presentation a week ago. But after the second session, I saw that what I wrote isn’t going to work, and I rewrote it. I’m holding identical evening sessions the following Wednesday, so the last presentation is June 10.

Almost half my bike rides go East, through Ellicott City. It’s good riding with hills, plenty of interesting routes, and of course lots of places for a lunch or snack. All of these rides go down Ilchester Rd, which is also the road our church is on. I mention this because they’re closing Ilchester Rd June 8, and it will remain closed for most of 2015. They’re quite serious about this. No traffic of any kind, 24 x 7. There are other roads, but Ilchester is the best. And with Ilchester closed, there will be that much more traffic on the alternates.

Bummer.

We have a quiet weekend. The only activity is a church picnic on Sunday. They’re forecasting thunderstorms, so this might be an “interesting” event. We volunteered to help setup. I’m wondering how many times we’ll end up rearranging tables between inside and outside venues.

I did a home project this week. We have a walk-in shower that uses a fiberglass floor pan and has tiled walls. The crack between the floor pan and the walls is caulked. The caulk was getting grody. I found a “dummies” article on re-caulking the shower and decided I could that. Sometimes home projects come out OK, but certainly not professional. This time things turned out pretty good. My caulk job isn’t quite up to the professional level, but it looks pretty good. Of course, it took me a week to do what a pro would have done in a few hours. But I don’t have to admit that to anybody.

I went to a SOCA neighborhood IT meeting Friday and picked up a new project. This time, I don’t mind the project. We have a web site. It’s works well for the community, but it’s awkward to maintain. It was started by Mike, one of our residents, and he still owns the site. It’s not possible to have anybody help Mike keep it updated, because the software is so primitive. We’re looking for an alternative that SOCA can own and will be easier to maintain. Mike and I are taking the lead. It should be a fun project, but there will be a lot of drudge work when we actually start rebuilding our site with whatever product we select. If anybody knows of a company that has a good product for hosting non-profit websites, please let me know.

That’s it for this week. I hope Glen continues his recovery and everybody else is healthy.

There are no pics this week.

We’re firmly in the swing of things back home. Last weekend, we had a neighborhood party and a BSO concert. This weekend, we had Circle and the “Parkton Open” at Ed’s. Today is a holiday, and we’re going to use it mostly relaxing. I have Men’s club this morning. (We generally solve the world’s problems. By the next week, there’s a hole new set and we have to meet again.) I’ll follow that with a ride. I’m building up, gradually making my rides longer. I’m considering a bike trip this fall. Danita will spend some time at the pool.

I started a neighborhood router workshop. I’m running two sets of sessions — one during the day and a second set in the evening. The first session described the basics of Internet Protocol. The second, which I will do this week, goes into the router settings. It shows how to see what’s connected and how to make basic settings. After that, we’ll go over some “advanced” topics. The first session went pretty well.

Both Danita and I saw the dentist last week. By coincidence, we both had Wednesday morning appointments. The world is definitely not fair. I went in as Danita was coming out. As usual, Danita got a great checkup. As usual, I was offered additional tips for cleaning my teeth better. They suggested I try using a sonic toothbrush. I have it, and it’s certainly different. I’m supposed to divide my mouth into 4 quadrants, brushing each as indicated by beeps emitted by the brush. So far, it mostly makes a fair-sized mess.

I’m off to solve the world’s problems. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

There are pics today. We’re home, safe and sound.

Window Washers Get a Board to Sit On

The first group left for the airport at 4:30 yesterday morning. At 5 PM, ours is the last flight. Four of us took the last van, leaving the hotel at 1 PM. Since we had some time to kill, we went for a walk in Daning-Lingshi Park. When we got outside the hotel, we found a group of window washers. Each washer gets one board to use as a seat. It looks precarious, but the window washers were hard at work and chatting away. As usual, we found musicians, singers, exercisers, and people just walking around in the park. There are several pics below.

Daning Park

Daning Park

Daning Park

Chenglish: “A Landscape In Your Eyes”

Birders

Daning Park

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Bund – Old Customs House

There are pics today. This was the last day touring. We were very lucky. We had a cold day with rain yesterday while we were touring museums. Today we had beautiful weather — sunny with mildly warm temperatures. We started out seeing the Bund area. This is the area where colonial powers built their Shanghai offices in the early 1900s. It’s the area where there were signs posted saying things like “No Dogs or Chinese Allowed”. The Chinese have preserved and repurposed these buildings. And every one of them flies several prominent PRC (People’s Republic of China) flags. The picture you see here is of the old customs building. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get a good picture of the row of all the Bund buildings flying their flags. It’s too bad, because it’s an impressive sight.

Bund – New Buildings

Yu Garden

In 1900, the sidewalk I took this picture from was a tow path where Chinese pulled boats upstream. There was farm land across the river. The area was artificially created (much like Miami, FL; but 100 years earlier). Today, the scene across the river has Shanghai’s tallest and most modern sky scrapers. Foundations run 65 meters deep to find bedrock. The tall building with a square hole in the center is a Japanese building. Originally, the hole was supposed to be round. The Chinese objected because it looked too much like the Japanese flag. (Feelings against the Japanese still run deep.) The Japanese resisted. The Chinese stopped building. The building sat incomplete until the Japanese changed their plans.

Yu Garden

Our next visit was to the famous Yu Gardens. These were built by Pan Yunduan starting in 1559. I’m including several pics. The Dragon Wall has an interesting story. Only the Emperor was permitted to have a dragon statue or image. Pan thought this would not be a problem because Shanghai is so far away from Beijing. But the Emperor went on a tour of southern China. When he visited the garden, he demanded to know how Pan dared use the dragon likeness. Pan was quite clever. Under the dragon’s head is a frog. If you blow the picture up, you can just barely see the frog in relief. Pan said he was the frog, and the dragon was the emperor. This wall was a symbol that he would forever be the subject of his emperor. After lunch we had a visit to the very un-inspiring Shanghai Planning Center. Tonight we will have our farewell dinner. Tomorrow we travel home.

Yu Garden

Yu Bonzi Trees

Yu Fish

Last of the Fish Food

Dragon Wall

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Fishing Boats (but they look ceremonial to me)

There are pics today. We had three activities today (besides meals). This morning, we went to the Shanghai Museum. This is considered to be one of China’s top museums. They have an extensive collection in bronze, sculpture, ceramics, ancient costumes, jade, furniture, and coins. We couldn’t begin to see everything in half a day. Apparently I don’t have very good tastes in art. We had an audio guide. The more important pieces had numbers. One could punch the number in the audio guide and hear a short message about the piece. Most of the things that caught my eye didn’t rate numbers.

Back From Fishing (my favorite)

After lunch, we went to a silk place. They had people weaving silk rugs, sculpting 3-D silk rugs, people making silk bed comforters, and all manner of silk merchandise for sale. If you were expecting something silk from us when we return, you’re going to be disappointed. We’ve spent about $100 on everything so far, including the meals that were on our own. This definitely does not include the price of anything made of high quality silk.

After dinner, we will see Chinese Acrobats. We have seen them twice in Baltimore. We’re looking forward to a great show tonight.

River Scene

Stone Lion with way cool eyes

Bodhisattva

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Bells of Marquis Su of Jin (950 BCE)

They say these bells were in tune when cast. That’s precision casting! The bells were played by striking them with a wooden mallet. The music sounds like Star Trek’s Betazoid dinner music. Each bell had two tones, depending on where it was struck. the round protrusions controlled the resonance. That’s some pretty sophisticated technology for 3,000 years ago. By 1800 AD, the Chinese had lost all of this technology. They could barely cast simple bronze statues of the zodiac animals for the Emperor’s summer palace.

Lock Park Garden

There are pics today. Our flight to Shanghai was canceled. Our tour company arranged for us to take a bullet train to another city, then fly from there to Shanghai. It means we won’t arrive in Shanghai until 9:30 PM. But we are quite happy because we didn’t have to miss anything on the tour.

Last Lock (Left side has low water level)

We woke up last night and realized we were in the first of 5 locks on the Yangtze River. We went out to our balcony to watch. There were 4 tour boats in the lock, 2 wide and 2 long. There was plenty of room lengthwise, but the width was quite crowded. There was only 10 feet or so to spare. The boats navigate in and out of the lock on their own power. The pilots are quite good, but they inevitably bump each other or bump the wall. They have rubber bumpers along both sides of the boat and travel slowly. Mostly we couldn’t even feel the bumps. We saw the lock finish emptying, the exit gate open, the boats move to the second lock, and the gate closing. That was enough, and we went back to bed.

Last Lock Door is Open, boats are moving to the river

By the time breakfast started, we were docked at the dam. There are lots of river tour boats, and they travel in lock step. They generally go through the locks at night. Commercial ships go through in the daytime. When docking, the first ship ties up to the dock. The next ship ties up to the first. We once walked through two other ships getting to our destination. A wall of ship’s crew prevented us from wondering around the wrong ship. Our local guide told us that 10,000 people visit the dam on an average day. That grows to 40,000 on holidays. (Some dam visitors arrive by bullet train or other transit.)

Dam and Future “Small Boat” Lift Termination

The scope of this project boggles the mind. I’ll let those who are interested look up statistics on the Internet. When they needed to remove a mountain of granite, they got a few tens of thousands of soldiers together and “disappeared” the mountain. They have two sets of locks. Either set can go in either direction. Generally, one set goes upstream and the other goes downstream. Depending on size, up to 6 ships can fit in a lock. There is no charge for ships to use the locks. (Hydro power pays all the bills). The project is already paid for itself after 19 years of operation. The locks are already working at capacity. Cargo ships are backed up trying to get through. The Chinese solution is to build a boat lift so the smaller boats can go up- or down-stream separately. A “Small Ship” is anything under 13 tons, which includes most of the tour boats.

This 4 Stage Escalator Replaces 200 Steps

The dam guide told us they are building a new canal. Beijing is in an arid area and needs more water. So they are building a canal to love water from the Yangtze. Its equivalent to building a canal from the Mississippi to DC. In the US or in China, one thing is the same. Now that more water is available, farmer all along the canal want more water. There are continuous fights about who gets how much water. Even the Chinese can’t always achieve harmony.

The rest of our day is on buses, trains, and planes. (Fortunately, we didn’t have to ride scooters around the streets of China!)

Red Pagoda

There are pics for today, if I can get them uploaded. If you don’t see 4 pics, just come back in 2 days. I will be able to post them from Shanghai. We cruised the Yangtze River, going through the first two gorges. Our off-boat tour today was a ride up a mini-gorge in a small boat. It’s an amazing area. The Chinese do themselves a disservice. They focus on some particular formation, attaching great importance to it. They build suspense, with everybody waiting to get around the bend to see the great formation. Then it turns out to be not much of anything given our view from the river, or some such thing. In the meantime, we lose focus on the grandeur and beauty of this area. For example, the second gorge is known for having “hanging coffins”. These are coffins, over 2000 years old, made of logs and placed in caves as high as possible above the river. A number of these were flooded when the dam was built. One can see some of the coffins in a museum. There is supposed to be one coffin still in its cave and visible from the small boat in the mini-gorge. Everybody was craning their neck in a futile attempt to find the coffin. In the meantime, we are sailing through some of the most amazing countryside I have ever seen.

Sampan Fish Market

There aren’t a lot of pics because they make a majestic area look banal. The Red Pagoda is from yesterday, at the relocated village we visited. I forgot it was on my cell phone. The sampan fish market was kind of cool. The sampans catch fish. Then they sail up to a tour boat and beat on the hull. Somebody from the tour boat comes out and buys fish for the buffet. The hanging coffin cave is explained above. The last picture shows dust that is still stirred up from a landslide that happened quite a while ago. I feel it deserves a name as grand as any of the other silly landmarks. I took a cue from the aura of mystery caused by the dust, and named it “Gateway to the Gods”.

Hanging Coffin Cave

Tomorrow we will be traveling until quite late. I might not be able to post tomorrow.

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Landslide Dust

There are pics today. Our first day’s cruise on the Yangtze River was quite relaxing. After two weeks of fairly high activity plus several days at high altitude, everybody was ready for a restful day. Our cruise ship is run by a US company. We were all delighted to find foods we are accustomed to. Chocolate is rare in China, and we haven’t found any peanut butter anywhere in the country. Our tour package includes the executive package — nicer rooms, nicer dining, wine with dinner, etc. It feels wonderful, especially after the rather primitive conditions we experienced in Tibet. There was an extra-cost tour in the morning. A few from our tour went on it and found it to be an interesting trip. But most of us made the most of a day of R & R.

Channel Marker, Sampan

We spent hours sitting on our balcony observing the world go by. They use unmanned boats as channel markers. Things have changed since “A Story of Ping”. A few sampans still sail these waters, but they use motors for propulsion and no longer have wise eyes. We didn’t see any ducks or boys tied to barrels. We attended a talk about the Yangtze River. From a commercial viewpoint, the Yangtze is the busiest river in the world. It is a little longer than the Mississippi, but carries twice the commercial traffic. “Ping” gives a peaceful picture of sailing down the river, but sailing the Yangtze was anything but peaceful in reality. Parts of the river, especially the 3 big gorges, had fast currents. Sailing downstream dangerous. One section was called “The gateway to hell”. There were a tow paths to pull boats upstream. They used human “tow trackers” to pull boats upstream. Boats required anywhere from 5 to 100 men. This was an extremely arduous and dangerous job with a high mortality rate. The men generally worked naked. (With some very clever photoshopping — women were not permitted to sit in the front of the boat.) The speaker said they used humans instead of animals because animals were more valuable, and humans more intelligent. Some of us in the audience questioned the second point. All of this changed with the building of the Three Gorges Dam.

Grandpa

We docked at 4:30 for tours. Most passengers visited the Red Pagoda. The Chinese wanted to preserve the Pagoda, but it was cost too much to move it. The hill the Pagoda sits on is above the high water mark, but the surrounding land is not. The solution was to build a levee around the pagoda hill, turning it into an island during the winter high water season. A pedestrian bridge give access.

Guide and “Mom”

Our group visited the village that lives along the river. This village was relocated to higher ground. The government gave the residents enough money to build new houses. The residents built the houses themselves or hired contractors to do it. Most houses are 4 stories high. There is a garage for storage at street level, then 3 levels for housing; one family per floor. The houses are large and modern. They have electricity, indoor plumbing, natural gas, air conditioning, etc. But these were farmers, and the land for farming is under water. They still farm small plots. The only industry is tourism. Villagers do crafts, work at the “Hello” market, work on the tour boats, or are retired. Their children leave the village to find jobs. The family we visited is typical. “Grandpa” is 90 and spends his days making sandals from corn leaves in the garage. “Mom and Dad” own the unit on the second floor. They are retired and draw 500 yuan/month from the government. Their two daughters have left town to find jobs. They take care of their younger 8-year old grandson. The daughter visits every 2 or 3 weeks to see her son. The rent one of their bedrooms for a nominal cost plus cooking services. When they get older, they will move in with their daughter and try to sell their house.

There are pics this week. I was very surprised to learn that internet access is included in our cruise package. As is happy hour with wine and cookies. I think I might enjoy the wine and cookies more.  ;-) They warned that there will be times when the internet doesn’t work because the boat is not able to see the satellite.

Red Panda

We started our day with a flight to Chongqing. got its 15 minutes of modern fame when Chang Kai Check moved his government here during the Chinese-Japanese war (which we call WW II). It is best known in the US by the Flying Tigers, which was a US team sent to help China establish a realistic air force. I learned that the name “Flying Tigers” was established through a misunderstanding. When Claire Lee Chennault founded the Flying Tigers, he brought P-40 aircraft, which had shark mouths painted on the nose. The Chinese in Chongqing didn’t know what a shark was, but they thought the nose art made a fine looking tiger.

Panda

We first toured the zoo, where we saw Panda Bears, Red Panda Bears, Asian Tigers, and White Bengal tigers. That’s quite a bit for a 1-hour zoo visit. After that, we went to China’s Chinatown. This rather confusing concept was caused by a war between the Chinese and *somebody* 300 years ago. The Chinese lost the war. The *somebodies* became the rulers. And the *somebodies* decided the Chinese should build a nice area for them in Chongqing. The Chinese used one of the buildings they built to stage their operas, socialize, help the poor Chinese with rice and money, etc. I don’t know that the place has an official name, but was told we could call it Hu Gong.

White Bengal, Asian Tigers

Our dinner was quite good. It’s the first time we had what we in the US would consider typical Chinese food. Then it was time to board the boat. We have the opportunity of taking a lot of optional tours (that cost extra money). But Danita and I plan to stick with the three tours included in our program.

China Chinatown

Here are some observations about Tibet. Chinese police presence is very strong in Tibet. One occasionally sees heavily armed police, but they are not threatening. The Chinese way is to try to talk an errant person into correcting his misbehavior. If he does, no formal charges are filed. If he doesn’t the police will eventually step in. It’s all part of the game of keeping a large country in line where it’s important to avoid losing face if possible. But there are also a lot more regular police (which are often unarmed). Our guide twice told us that we need to be more careful because undercover police speak English and can hear what we say.

Chinese are building infrastructure, opening factories, and generally moving Tibet very quickly into a modern society. To make this happen, Chinese are moving into Tibet in large numbers. A large number of Tibetans look at the modern and Americanized culture China has to offer, and are thinking that this isn’t progress. They prefer the old ways. They don’t want the modern residential high rises, the emphasis on education, the traffic, the cash economy, etc. When asked, one of our lecturers said that alcoholism has become a large issue in Tibet, as a large number of people are left behind. The Tibetans I was able to talk with hope that these issues can be resolved peacefully.

Last night’s dinner was on our own. We found a grocery store and bought some food, including more Western treats than we need. The chocolate chip cookies came in handy for a snack, because lunch wasn’t until 3:00. We’re reserving the rest of the cookies for the airplane lunch tomorrow. Their meals have been uniformly awful so far.

Morning Dancing

We started out the day going to a park in Lhasa. They have Tibetan dancing from 8:30 to 10. It’s a free recreational program. They do a dance from Northern Tibet. It is wildly popular. There must have been over 500 people dancing. The people in the center are the lead dancers. Besides the people you see here, dancers spilled out all over the area, far beyond where they could see the lead dancers. In the middle of a dance, the activity organizer came out and good-naturedly chided folks for not dancing correctly. It’s for sure everybody was having a good time.

Jade Jug

After this we went to a local cultural and history museum. It wasn’t a huge museum, but they did a very nice job. They started with 30,000 BCE. The pieces we liked best were actually made in China. This jade jug has 3 handles firmly affixed to the body. Each handle has a perfect ring, not attached to the handles. I can’t imagine carving something like this.

Jade Jug

The next jug was an even more impressive bit of carving, with the lid held to the pot with a jade chain.

Ceramic Jug

It must have been a day to admire jugs. The last piece I’ll share is a ceramic jug. I can’t say exactly why I like it. I just thought it had a great sense of beauty.

Potala Palace Side View

Next was the highlight of Tibet — the Potalo Palace, otherwise known as the winter palace. It was wise to visit this palace on the 3rd day, because visiting requires climbing or descending 600 steps. Danita was getting herself all psyched up about whether she would be able to do this. But she decided to try. She did it and found that while it was difficult, it was far from impossible. Altogether, 15 of the 24 people on this tour visited the palace. Everybody who started up made it all the way. This included a lady who broke both ankles just last October.

Potala Palace

As usual, we couldn’t take any pictures inside. Today no functions are carried out in this palace. Before China took over Tibet, white sections were for government operations (including the jail), red sections were for religious, and yellow sections were for the Deli Lama.

Entrance to the Palace, 200 Steps Up

At The Top Of The Steps

Potala Palace Garden

I’ll include a few more shots. To a non-believer, it looks a lot like other Tibetan Buddha palaces, monasteries, and temples. Highlights included tombs for many of the Deli Lamas. I also learned that the 4th Deli Lama was more interested in drinking wine and writing poetry than in Buddhism. I suppose drinking wine can enlighten one to write poetry.

We had some free time after lunch. After dinner, we a dancing demonstration. Tibetan dancing is quite vigorous, and the dancers didn’t pose for pictures. But I did get a few shots, which are below.

Dancer

Dancer

Dancer

Dancer

Dancer

The next 3 days we are sleeping on the river boat. Internet is not free. My China phone plan does not include data. Unless the Internet on the boat is a lot cheaper than I suspect, my next post will be on Sunday, May 10 (China time).