Last minute roaming and home

Saturday morning we strolled through the houtongs in our neighborhood and came across a community music center tucked in between (as all things are in these areas)some busy alleyways. We entered via an open courtyard door and followed a planted pathway to a back courtyard surrounded by large rooms that were being used for childrens' art (drawing) lessons, dance classes, and Chinese instrumental music lessons. Some boys were kicking a football in the yard while waiting for another class to start. It was such a surprise to find it strictly by accident and to take simple pleasure in its just being there. Again, we were glad to see what goes on in the daily lives (this time, Saturday morning activities) of the folks who live in this busy enclave in the middle of a city of 16+ million people. It's remarkable how these little islands of tranquility are carved out.

Our guide and driver showed up 20 minutes early to take us to the airport (highly unnecessary, since Saturday is not as busy, traffic-wise as other days) but we were hustled off to make our way to the airport for a 4:10pm flight. We sat for 4 hours at the airport, time we would much rather have spent doing a little more exploring. We left from the new international terminal that was built for the Olympics; it is spectacular architecturally and a model of high tech efficiency for other airports.

Everything went smoothly until we got to O'Hare in Chicago, when, as is typical of O'Hare, everything got jammed up...some heavy thunderstorms occasioned delays, cancellations, jam-ups with stand-by supplicants....After all the delays, we had to switch planes and finally got underway...arrived Boston about 2:30am, home by about 3am. We are moving in slow motion today. It seemed that 1/2 the plane was coughing and sneezing, and Lily and I woke to pretty full and nasty colds today...thankfully, the timing was right and we didn't have to stress about having a cold during the trip.

Overall, Beijing felt much less hectic than Shanghai or Hangzhou....the guide remarking, "but it's much smaller than Shanghai (only 16 million rather than 20 million)" Be that as it may, drivers seemed more prone to obey traffic lights, to give slight chance to pedestrians and not confront them directly, and to honk less. Were we to return to Beijing, we would stay at the Red Lantern Guest House again for the unique experiences provided by its style, location, and way of operating.

Beijing hutongs

Beijing hutongs

We ventured out of our hutong and into the fray of a busy neighborhood,to find that we are in the middle of the musical instruments district. Store after store selling guitars, other stringed instruments from western violins, cellos, to ancient Chinese stringed instruments. Other stores sell brass, woodwinds, each store carrying a huge inventory of a few special items. We also learned on our way back from Olympic park that we are actually quite near where we stayed the last time we were here, just in the hutongs rather than in a big hotel overlooking them

This is a much more interesting way to travel. We have never been ones to like the views from Hiltons, and this experience confirms that sterile costs way too much in many ways. I'll upload more photos when we get home. It's too time consuming to do here.

See you all soon.

Beijing

Flying from Shanghai to Beijing is easy and totally different from what it was in 1995.  China Air is thoroughly organized and pleasant. Once in Beijing, we realized that we would be crisscrossing the city, a huge undertaking in traffic, so we did not go to our hotel until after we went to Tiannamen Square and the Forbidden City.  It was rainy and chilly, and we were pretty exhausted, so it was hard to listen to every word of the travel guide.  When we indicated that we would like to go to the hotel sooner, SiSi said, "But I have to give you my informations."  So we trucked on through the visitor parts which are much more restricted than they were in 1995.  The vastness of the square and the Forbidden City are awsome, and the City with descriptions of the emperor and all his concubines makes us understand revolutions.

 

Our guest house is very difficult to find and our hearts dropped when we arrived at its door down an alleyway.  Soon we found out that we were at the main house and that our room was at the west yard about 7 minutes walk away.  Our driver took us up the street after a lengthy check in process while our bags were loaded onto a bicycle cart and hauled to the west yard.  Inside the gates of this restored hutong is a different world, cut off from the noise and bustle of the outside world.  The courtyard garden is serene, and the common room has a fish pond and small water fall.  The open courtyard is beautifully landscaped while the inner, covered common space is covered with glass.  We are enjoying sitting in the group space and talking to people and watching the family who owns the place go about their daily tasks.  The room is simple and small, but adequate. Staying here provides a completely different experience from what we've had on the trip...a thoroughly enjoyable change of pace and scenery.

 

Friday....we had breakfast at the inn and then went to the Great Wall.  Took a cable car up the steepest part, then landed at a plateau above which was a steep set of stairs to get onto the wall itself.  It was a cloudy period of the day, so the very distant parts of the wall weren't visible, but we saw enough to gasp.  It is so massive, period.   On the way back to our inn, we went to Olympic Park...just what we all saw on tv during the games.  The Birds' Nest simply looks bigger than what we've seen , and the Water Cube is weird....literally a cube that has sort of water bubbles as sides. 

 

Back at the inn, we are about to go out on our own to explore the neighborhood. 

 

Home tomorrow...what an adventure this has been.  We're sure that if we were to come back in 10 years it will be a completely different country just as it seems to be completely different from 1995.  We are SO glad we've come and we feel that we had enough time to get used to many things that seemed daunting in the first days. 

Shanghai by day

Found a tranquil spot in the French Quarter

 

Today we walked to the Shanghai Museum, and visited 3 floors of the 4 exhibit floors.  Then we hiked around the area near the museum and did lunch in a Shanghai Hot Pot restaurant....we cooked our own food in broths right at the table.  Fun activity that the kids liked a lot.

After lunch we ambled through a beautiful park and to the French quarter, where we ambled through Fu Xing Park, an island of tranquility in the midst of all the chaos of the city.  The French Quarter is just lovely (wealthy people do manage to find nice places to live) and the park is a focal point for rest, Tai Chi classes, board game playing, and just looking.  It is fully spring, and everything is green and in bloom.

 

Lily and I left the group and took a cab back to the hotel ( an adventure in itself, since two cab drivers now couldn't read the address on the card they give you that says,, "Take me to the Magnificent Hotel"...at (unreadable address in Chinese, apparently.  We managed to get here, since we had a map with the hotel marked on it, and the cabbie finally got where we wanted to go.  When we were about a block away, he took a left instead of right hand turn and we noticed that....a u-turn in the middle of a busy street is nothing here, so we got here just fine.  The rest of the gourp were tyring to get to Sun Yat Sen's (sp??) house in the French Quarter when we left.  It was a fun day just gawking at so many different things.

 

I realize that this blog is very in the moment...it'll take me weeks to organize my thoughts into something coherent...organizing photos will help to do that.  Digital cameras make so many things easy...maybe too easy, because many things are captured through a lens.

 

Tomorrow to Beijing.  

Shanghai by Day

I lost the blog for today.  The internet connection from this hotel is weird.  So I'll just note where we went....was a great day.

Shanghai Museum. Then to a Hot Pot Shanghai restaurant for lunch.  Then to the French Quarter where we ambled in gorgeous Fu Xing Park, an island of tranquility in a sea of madness.  Amazing how a large, well tended public garden can provide space for recovery in the center of chaos.  It was just wonderful...no tourists besides us....perhaps because we had to walk here.

 

Tomorrow to Beijing.

Shanghai

Shanghai, the Giant Anthill

 

Shanghai is insane, having reached maximum entropy a long time ago..  The entire city, like the rest of the China we've seen is a construction project. 

We and several million other tourists went to the Bund last evening.  The Shanghai skyline is just as terrific as promised, but you must view it from across the river next to a huge construction project that goes all night long because the city is preparing for Shanghai Expo 2010.  They're doing here what they did in Beijing to prepare for the Olympics..tearing down whole sections of the city and building up who knows what.  Some major landmarks are being restored (like the Peace Hotel) and are covered up completely.

 

We took a train from Hangzhou to Shanghai yesterday morning...a very fast, smooth, thoroughly modern train.  Amtrak, can you come here for lessons on how to run railroads?  As I was taking photos of the monitor, which flashed in Chinese and English, I realize that I made a mistake in reporting train speed the last time I wrote about trains here.  We traveled at about 140 km/hr...we were supposed to take a high speed train on the route from Shanghai to Souzhou, but we ended up on a local...even then, we were traveling pretty fast.

 

We're on our own in Shanghai..no tour guides, so we've been sputtering our way around and doing quite well.  Suzie and Richard are navigating, and they successfully got us to Nanjing Road, the Bund, Yu Yuan Garden, through the maze of the subway.  We took cabs back to the hotel, a sensible thing to do at night, but NOT in rush hour.  Cabs are cheap here, but one must be willing to give up control to the driver..any backseat driving will only bring great misery.  Suzie, Lily, and I are somehow able to just go with the flow of the crazy traffic.  I would never drive anywhere here, never..

 

Today we are going to the Shanghai Museum and to some other must see places.  We changed our hotel from the original booking, and are very glad we did, since from the other place, we would be spending all of our time in traffic trying to get to the places we can now walk to.  The hotel is eh, like most of the places we've stayed.  It is a bit more upscale than the others; upscale has been defined by Chris as a hotel where they give you another roll of toilet paper before the first one is gone.  I find this notion captures a lot.

 

We head to Beijing tomorrow, and our traveling companions head home.  We have a China Air flight at 9:25 am, which requires leaving the hotel at 6:50.  Lily will miss having Anna to be with.  This will be their last day together as two Chinese girls who blend in while their parents are the ones who stand out.  At one point, Lily had gone ahead of the group to get some photos, and I lost track of her.  When she ambled back toward us, I told her I was concerned.  She said, "Don't worry;  It's not hard to find you....I'll find you before you'd find me."  Hurray.  This is part of what this trip is about.

 

Right now, everyone is pretty tired.  We all got cranky yesterday until we had lunch.  Our Hangzhou guide was in charge of getting us breakfast for the trip.  Here's what he bought for the 6 of us: a plain loaf of bread; a bottle of orange juice drink; a package of saltines; a tiny package of pretzels; a box of pocky sticks.  Moral of story:  Do not put a 20-something very young man in charge of taking care of food for travelers.  We were starving.

 

Off to the races.  Looking forward to coming home.

Hangzhou

Hangzou is a spectacular city

 

Yesterday we arrived in Hangzhou in the pouring rain, which put a crimp in our plans to ride on a boat on West Lake, a huge lake in the middle of the city surrounded by a park.  One side of the lake looks up at green mountains, the other at the modern, spectacular cityscape.  It is a beautiful city, very much in the forefront of industrial businesses..international corporations.  Population is 7 million...hard to believe until you get a view of the cityscape from a high point, which we did. by way of a rebuilt pagoda.  To accomodate people who don't/can't walk up the stairs, there's an escalator up 2 flights, then elevators up to the second level to the top.  Looking in one direction is a seemingly pristine set of green mountains (same as view from the lake) and in the other direction is this phenomenal view of the city which spreads out in high rise everything for about 180 degrees.

 

Later, we rode a commuter boat on the grand canal, though not many people actually commute on the boat any more.  Some people use it to get from one point to another, but many just ride it as we did...a tourist attraction.  To encourage people to use the water taxi, the fare is 3 yuan during rush hour and 5 yuan in non-rush hour.

 

A long hike through the park where azaleas and rhodies are in full bloom and everything is green..trees are leafed, willows are weeping green, and it is thoroughly spring...sort of like mid-May at home.  The temperature was about 78 degrees or more today...hot and sunny..and humid, too, after the rain stopped at about 10 am. 

 

We ate at a local dumpling and rice for breakfast place in the morning, at this ridiculously fancy restaurant for lunch (tour guides like to take foreigners to these off the chart places, it seems), and at a local place this evening. 

 

Suzie and Richard went off to a light and dance/music show in the park that is put on by the same man who did the opening ceremony of the Olympics last summer.  The rest of us were too tired, so we came back to the hotel, rested, and are ready to cash it in.

 

This was perhaps the nicest day we've had here...got to get the flavor of a major city without being in a marathon.  Wonderful.