Dumplings: Fish, Rice Noodles, Walnut, Sweet Potato, Mushroom

There are pics today. Tomorrow we go to Lhasha, Tibet for 4 days, followed by 3 days on a river boat. I don’t know how good the Internet service will be. Be patient, I’ll post when I can.

Last night’s dinner was a lot of fun. We ate 16 different dumplings. Each was shaped to represent the filling. The pictures for some of the better dumplings didn’t turn out, but these will show the idea. We had 3 tables with 8 people at each table. None of the tables ate all their dumplings.

Masked Warrior Dance

The music afterwards was quite entertaining. Tang Chinese tunes played by Tang instruments were accompanied by pretty dancing girls. I’m a sucker for pretty dancing girls — especially the ribbon dance. I tried taking pics, but the camera couldn’t handle the lighting. This one came out the best. And, of course, the opening and closing numbers included those fabulous big Chinese drums.

Bike

The next morning Danita stayed in the hotel. I and many of the other tourers went to the city wall. Chinese walls are much more impressive than Western walls. The wall is 14 KM long (8 miles). The top of the wall is 45 feet wide. Some of us rented bikes and a few of us rode all the way around the wall. Chris was anxious to finish within our allotted 45 minutes and set a brisk pace. I decided to ride with him. It was a little faster than I would normally ride. We could only ride this fast because it was before 9 AM and the tourists hadn’t shown up yet. It’s the most fun I’ve had in China so far.

Biggest Drum

Drum Show

We were all done at the center city by 10. We joined everybody up and went to the Drum Tower. The Drum Tower and Bell Tower were used for time keeping. There’s still plenty of big drums at the drum tower. If an adult American starts drumming one of these with their hands, it will make a most pleasing drumming sound. Before long, a safety officer (kind of a sub-police person) will come see who’s playing with the drums. When he sees who it is, he will shake his head and go back to whatever he was doing. (I wasn’t the only one to disturb a safety officer’s harmony.) While we were there, we watched a very cool drum demonstration. Nobody does drums like the Chinese do drums.

Muslem Shopping District

We still had time before lunch to visot the Muslim shopping area. Since it was a sunny day, pleasantly warm; and a holiday weekend to boot; it was mobbed. We were offered the opportunity to walk part of the 1.5 KM long shopping area. Danita and I walked one block and that was enough for us. We were feeling all toured out, so we both skipped a visit to the folk art museum. (It sounded a lot like Baltimore’s Visionary Art Museum.)

Bell Tower

Making Noodles

There are couple of pics today.

I forgot to mention a really cool point of our lunch yesterday. We had noodle soup. The cool thing about this soup was that the noodles were made entirely by hand. I watched the guy make noodles entirely with his hands, and I still don’t understand how he did it. It’s magical. If you want to see a video of Chinese noodle making, you can see one here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64fu1ZHiMP8

Today the weather was cool and rainy. It was a nice change of pace from the hot, sunny weather we have experienced up to now.

Zhao Jing (Cindy)

This morning we started off with another fabulous breakfast buffet. Then we went to hear a lecture about Chinese cultural history at a local university. Professor Zhao Jing (English name: Cindy) gave the lecture. She did a fabulous job of condensing all of Chinese history down to one 2-hour talk. After having taken my course, I learned quite a bit. The end of the talk was about “New China”, as Chinese sometimes call the Peoples Republic of China. She told her family’s story during the food shortage, then the Cultural Revolution. It was a moving talk. You can see Cindy here holding up her parent’s Red Guard band and medallions.

Oracle Bone

After lunch at the University, we went to the Xi’an Historical Museum. There were plenty of people at the museum, but we got in during the lunch hour, when they stop selling tickets. So it was a little less crowded while we were there. There were plenty of artifacts. I’m including the picture of my personal favorite — an Oracle bone. Between 1200 and 1000 BCE, kings wanted to know the future. They would compose a yes/no question such as “Should I launch the battle tomorrow?” The question would be inscribed on a turtle shell or ox shoulder bone. They would drill a hole in the bone, then apply a hot poker. The bone would crack. A diviner would study the crack to come up with an answer, then inscribe the answer on the other side of the bone. This represents the earliest written Chinese history.

We opted out of an optional stop at a jade jewelry store so we could relax at the hotel for an hour. After a dumpling dinner tonight, we’ll see a Chinese musical performance.

There are a couple of unspectacular pics. You can see better on the internet.

Pit 1 Warriors

This is our third stop and our third visit to a capital city in China. Xi’an was the first capital city, starting in 221 BC. Luoyang was the second capital city. Beijing was the third. We started out getting the hotel to open their breakfast half an hour early. Then we took the bullet train to Xi’an. there wasn’t quite enough luggage room and I was slow on the uptake, so Danita had a less than comfortable ride. (I was in the center seat and Danita on the aisle. So she got the suitcase.) We traveled at 300 KPH (185 MPH).

Kneeling Archer

When we got here, it was time for lunch. We had a wonderful buffet at a brand new restaurant. Then it was off to the Terracotta Warriors. It was important we see them today because tomorrow starts a 3-day weekend in China. (May 1 is their Labor Day). The warriors will be mobbed starting tomorrow. It was already too crowded for me. The pit 1 (the largest grouping) was quite crowded. After I managed one pic, my crowd anxiety kicked in and I had to leave the building. The other exhibits weren’t as crowded, so I got to see them.

We got out of the museum at 4, but the weekend rush had already started. We got to our hotel at 7:30. We had a quick but good dinner before checking in. It’s past my bedtime, but tommorw’s another busy day and I don’t want to get behind.

Chinese Fiddle

There are pics today. Most people who visit Louyang make it a half-day trip to visit the grotto. But Road Scholar emphasizes more education and contact with locals. After we checked into our hotel and had dinner, we went to a presentation about traditional Chinese musical instruments. This could have been really boring. But the Master brought some local students to demonstrate. He demonstrated himself. And he made sure the music was pleasing to the audience — i.e. Western tunes. It was a delightful evening.

Longmen Grotto Budda (stollen from the Internet)

The next morning was breakfast. I have to say, I am impressed. The Beijing hotel had the best breakfast buffet I have ever seen. Louyang is a much smaller city and the hotel is older. But the Louyang buffet was actually better. There were hundreds of items, all cooked fresh. There’s no way we’re losing weight on this vacation.

Grotto Rock

The it was off to the grotto. This was an area where people carved grottos into the limestone cliffs along the Yi River. 1400 caves were created between 500 and 900 AD. The carvings are remarkable. They were all hand made, most with an army of artisans. I have several photos, but the image on the Internet is much better. So I stole it. The stone with a floral pattern was crated by some kind of natural volcanic process 300 million years ago.

Our lunch was with a family at a Chinese village. This village had about 7,000 residents. We broke up into groups of 8 and ate at one of three houses. We talked about life in china, with our tour guide as an interpreter. The family put out a feast. We couldn’t eat 1/4 of the food. We learned a lot and had a great time.

School English Class

We finished up the day by visiting an English class in the village school. Danita and I visited a class of 12-year olds. Chinese 12-year olds are exactly like US 12-year olds, so far as I can determine. I was impressed by how good their English is. One of the students took this picture. The finger is not mine.

Man Taking Pictures in the Park

We had dinner on our own. Danita and I had so much food today, we found a bakery and had dinner for a few bucks. We ate in the local park. The park is right across the street from our  hotel. It’s a popular spot, with dozens of groups of people doing their own thing. If you look closely, you can see a man in a blue jacket taking pictures of the flowers.This is a good time to mention that China has a massive project to make their country green. Everywhere you look, there are attractive gardens and newly-planted trees.

Girl in Park

Here’s another pic from the park. These pics are misleading. One doesn’t often see individuals doing their thing in the park. It’s almost always large groups of people, often to the accompniement of music. One can often hear 2 or 3 different songs at the same time. Somehow it all works. I’ve never seen a cross or unhappy person in a Chinese park.

There are no pics today.

Today we spent the day traveling from Beijing to Luoyang. We flew an Air Bus plane that seated about 350 people. The flight was completely full. It’s only a 2-hour flight, but we had to leave for the airport at 10. It’s impossible to do anything with a group of 24 and be done by 10. We got into Luoyang at 3, and again it’s too little time to do an organized activity before dinner.

This is a good time to offer some general observations about Beijing. The Chinese are agressive. There’s absolutely none of the British attitude of “queue up and wait your turn.” Is there something to see or photograph that’s busy? Push your way in. When it was time to check out of our hotel, there were 3 desk clerks and three guests talking with them. So I started a line. An employee indicated I should approach the counter. I didn’t, and this upset him. So he took our room keys and walked over to one of the busy desk clerks to indicate she should check us out *now*. A few people in China like to wear gloves. I understand the cotton white gloves, but some bicyclists wear heavy gloves that covers the hand and forearm, almost up to the elbow. Considering the high temperature was over 90, I couldn’t understand why. Our group discussed this. The consensus opinion was that the gloves protect the cyclist’s hands and arms when they bump against people and cars as they push to get through *now*.

This brings us to the traffic. As I mentioned earlier, just about every family in Beijing has a car. There are about 6 million cars in Beijing for 22 million people. There’s lots of slow traffic in Beijing. Drivers expect each other to be just as pushy on the road as they are in person. When a lane disappears, cars inevitably have to invent an extra lane as they push to get in front of one another. Our guide told us the traffic in Luoyang is much better than traffic in Beijing. The streets we were on were not crowded. But I can hear from our room that drivers in Luoyang love their horns just as much as do drivers in Beijing. The other thing about Beijing traffic is that rules of the road are more like suggestions than absolute requirements. People generally obey rules of the road — until they have a reason to do otherwise. Our bus made an illegal U turn in the middle of the street to avoid driving around the block — even though the street wasn’t wide enough and he had to jockey the bus back and forth to complete the turn. Other drivers tolerate this behavior, probably because they do it themselves all the time. The amazing thing is that cars almost always look in good shape, without fender dents or bumper bumps. Of course, if I earned a Chinese salary and spent $100K on a car, I guess I would take very good care of it.

This brings us to Chinese taxes. They’re outrageous. Smart phones are made in China. But their price in China is double what it is in the US, at official exchange rates. Everybody in China has or wants a friend in the US who is willing to smuggle goods into the country. The Chinese government gets away with their outrageous taxes because nobody sees how much of the purchase price is for taxes. And it’s not so easy to see the US prices, because China blocks most successful US commercial sites.

The other reason China gets away with outrageous taxes is that they are incredibly successful, and therefore most citizens support their government. The standard of living in China has increased unbelievably in just one generation. Our guide told us that when his parents were young and wanted to get married, they had to get the “big 3 items” first. These were: a watch for him, a sewing machine for her, and a bicycle. At that time, a good bicycle was 3 to 4 month’s salary. Today, before a woman’s father will let her marry, he will make sure the groom has the “big 3 items”. They are: a condo, a car, and a good career.

The internet seems to work pretty well here. I should be able to post some pics of Luoyang tomorrow.

Temple Of Heaven

There are lots of pics today. This is our last full day in Beijing, and it was a lot of fun. We started out with a Tai Chi class. There are video cameras all over Beijing. We were joking that in exchange for visiting China, we had to provide a little entertainment to the Chinese authorities. If anybody watched the video, I’m sure they got a pretty good laugh.

Temple Of Heaven

From Tai Chi, we went to the Temple of Heaven. This is where the Emperor would go to pray for a good harvest, blah blah blah. I’m putting a picture of the building here. But what was much more interesting is that the Chinese have put the temple grounds to very good use. The temple grounds are actually larger than the Forbidden City, but there aren’t all that many buildings (even counting the gift shops). The rest of the area is grass, trees, and flowers. People come here to have a good time. Most of the people we saw were retired. It’s a combination outdoor park – senior center – exercise gym. I’m putting a bunch of pics from the park at the bottom of the blog.

Hutong Lunch

Our next stop was a house in the Hutong. One of the families provides meals for tour groups. We had lunch in her house, discussed what it’s like to live in the Hutong, and got to ask tons of questions. The meal was a typical multi-course affair and the food was excellent. I won’t bore you with all the dishes we had, but I will mention that lunch included garlic sprouts. (Eat your heart out, Dani.)

Rickshaw

After lunch, we all got a rickshaw ride around the Hutong. We got a close look at the houses and the general area. One could do a lot worse than live in the Hutong. It’s close to everything. The houses are often over 100 years old and are quite strong. There’s a strong sense of community.

Tea Tasting

Our next stop was the bell tower, just north of the Hutong. We visited a tea shop in the bottom of the bell tower, sampling 4 kinds of tea. The lady doing the sampling had a clever presentation and was quite accomplished at what she did. While most of the rest of the group purchased tea and tea cups, Danita and I went to the top of the bell tower. It was a nice view, including a birds-eye view of the Hutong.

Hutong From Bell Tower

We went back to the hotel about 4 to have dinner on our own. Danita and I didn’t want a lot to eat. We walked around the block and came across a bakery. We had a pizza bread, a veal bread, and a cupcake. It was quite good and was exactly what we wanted after having eaten so many large meals.

Later on tonight we will watch the Beijing Opera, which is performed in our hotel. Busses of tourists come to our hotel to watch the opera. This should be good. Below are some pics from the park this morning.

Parallel Bars

Danita Swing

Chinese Zumba

Music Lesson

Singing

Chinese Chess

Dominos By Peach Blosums

Sword Dancing

Hockey Sack

Stretching

Olympic Village Dragon Building

There are some pics today. I keep on forgetting things I wanted to post. The interesting thing about Tian’anmen Square is that it is quite busy in the morning. Chairman Mao’s mausoleum is open for viewing in the morning. It’s a very popular attraction. We saw the morning crowd and it was quite impressive. But we were on the bus and I couldn’t get a picture.Today’s visit was the Great Wall. We drove by the Olympic Village and stopped for some pictures. These 5 buildings were the living area and are supposed to represent a dragon. The first building is the dragon’s head. The last is the tail.

Gondola Cars

We drove to the Jinshanling area of the great wall. It’s over 2 hours outside Beijing, but it’s in the mountains, it’s not over-restored (and hence a little more authentic), and it’s not as crowded. It was well worth the drive. We started out by riding gondola cars from the parking lot up into the mountains. Our guide warned us about the locals. They do their best to “help” tourists walk along the wall. In exchange, the tourists are supposed to buy something ad exorbitant prices, such as a $16 refrigerator magnet. Some people wanted to buy the stuff. Others needed some help and were happy to buy something. But the locals were a nuisance to the rest of us. But the wall was still fabulous and we’re very glad we visited.

Great Wall

We didn’t spent all that much time climbing the wall. It follows the ridge of the mountains, which have dramatic dips and climbs. Parts of the wall were in pretty bad shape, making footing difficult in places. But the climbs were fun and the views spectacular. As is often the case, pictures can’t possibly give the feeling one gets when being there. But here’s some snap shots just for fun.

Great Wall

We ran into a lot of traffic coming back to our hotel. So we went out for a quick dinner about 7:30. As usual, the dinner had plenty of great dishes. The featured dish was dumplings. Yummy.

Great Wall

Great Wall

Great Wall

There  are several pics today. I forgot to mention one of the coolest features of our Boeing 777. Every seat had a 110V outlet and a 5V USB outlet for charging phones and computers. How cool is that?

Hall Of Supreme Harmony

The big activity today was visiting the Forbidden City. The buildings are quite impressive. They look large, horizontal (almost squat), and very permanent. I wish our guide was more interested in architecture. I’m sure I’ll be reading up on how these buildings were built when we get back. The tourist experience was very different than the guide books indicated. The Chinese no longer allow visitors in most of the rooms. Instead, one can walk to the doorway and look inside. The big attraction is the Hall of Supreme Harmony, where the emperor sat on his throne and dispensed state business. It was so crowded we weren’t able to see the throne room.

Somebody’s looking for good luck at the Scratched Water Cauldron

When the Japanese conquered Beijing (circa 1911), they wanted to steal the huge gold-colored water cauldrons (used for fire protection). They were far too heavy to steal, so the Japanese scratched away at the gold paint.

Jade With 9 Dragons

Nine is a lucky number. Dragons represent the Emperor. That’s why this jade surrounded by brass had to have 9 dragons. If you look closely, you can see 4 dragons — one on either side of the circle and one on either side at the bottom. The other side has 4 more dragons. The last dragon comes about because this item was placed outside the emperor’s living quarters. When you look through the hole, you see the emperor — the 9th dragon.

Emperor’s Bedroom

After lunch, we visited Tian’anmen Square. This is the largest public square in the world. It is also totally uninteresting. There are no seats of any kind, no food or drink for sale, no trees, and two very small patches of shade. We had no problems getting into the square, but the Chinese had a much harder time getting through security. We had more time here than I needed for sure.

Sill Keeps Bad Spirits Out

Most doorways have these tall sills. It seems like Chinese bad spirits have something in common with zombies. They can’t jump very high. These sills keep the bad spirits out.

Rockery

A really great Chinese rockery has lots of holes, created naturally by a stream. Ideally, all these holes are interconnected. A smoke source at the bottom of the rockery would result in smoke coming out of all the holes at the top.

I must say the food has been quite good. This evening we had our Beijing duck welcome dinner. As usual, there were many dishes available. If one doesn’t look good to you, there are half a dozen others that are more interesting.

There are no pics today.

Today was all about getting to China. Our flight to Toronto was on time. We flew a Dash-8 (turbo-prop). The flight to Beijing was in a Boeing 777 Dreamliner (their newest plane). The 777 is amazing. The interior looks modern, spacious, and very attractive. The cabin had recessed LED lighting that changed colors. It had a touch-screen entertainment system that included dozens of video choices and dozens more audio choices. Overhead carry-on storage was ample even though every seat was taken. Leg room was better than most economy-flights. We could even use our food trays without bumping our belly against the tray. The flight took 12 hours. Air Canada’s service was quite good, which went a long way towards making the flight go easily.

The hardest part of our trip was the 1-1/2 hour bus ride to go 30 miles from the airport to the hotel. Beijing is filled with cars, it was Friday afternoon, and traffic was miserable. We saw very few bicycles and scooters. Very few Chinese vehicles. We saw lots of Japanese, Korean, European, and even US cars on the road.

We got checked in to our hotel and had a very good lazy-susan Chinese dinner at the hotel. Most of us had long flights. We adjourned early to relax in our rooms. We’re also starting late tomorrow. We won’t leave the hotel until 9. That gives plenty of time for sleeping in, getting ready, and eating breakfast. Highs in Beijing are forecasted to be near 90, with no rain.

Our Email is working great, but the phones had a glitch. I sent a message to tech support. Hopefully, our phones will be working tomorrow. If not, drop us an Email or ask Mark or Jul to forward your phone message. They have an alternate way to get hold of us by phone.

There is one pic — a map of our trip. (As always, you can click on it to make it bigger.)

China Trip Map

We’re leaving for China Thursday. It’s busy times, but not because of the trip. About the only thing we have to do is pack our suitcase. That won’t take long because we aren’t taking much. I was lucky with the Howard County Library E-books. I was able to get several good ones loaded into my Kindle reader. There’s even a possibility of picking up one more   book if I’m lucky.

Our Church had a seminar about the timeline of the bible Friday evening and Saturday. That sounded interesting so we went to that. We both enjoyed it, and we both learned a lot. Sunday after Church we went to a Church breakfast. Then Danita got a haircut while I counted money. We have a BSO concert this afternoon (highlighting Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition”). After that, Dot and Duane are hosting their annual open house. They traditionally do this in January, but Dot was still recovering this year. It will be the first time we’ve seen them since Dot’s surgery.

We usually have dinner out on Thursday. But last Wednesday Hooligans (my vote for best restaurant meatloaf in Howard County) was offering $10.40 off in honor of tax day. We couldn’t pass that up. Danita cooked her last dinner last night. We’ll be eating leftovers until all the food is gone. If we run out of leftovers, we’ll just have to eat out.

That’s all for now. I’ll try to post often while we’re in China.