Month: August 2014

Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights will be spent on the Century Sun and WiFi is an unknown quantity. Until then keep up the emails, for we get off the ship from time to time
Spent today in Chongqing City. Never heard of it before but it is only a city of 8 million with surrounding population of 32 million. A real eye-opener with its own harbour bridge and Opera House. Quite spectacular!
Pictures will follow once we can download them.
And then I am going to sleep in until at least 10 tomorrow morning.
Confucius say… man who keep feet firmly on ground have trouble putting on pants!

Terracotta Warriors recently unearthed in Winthrop

Chinese tea ceremony at the Heavenly Temple in Xi’an

The lady of the 300 year old house in Yangshuo

Sew and crow lesson time, this time in silk embroidery in Guilin

China touring party with our guide Henry Li, a native of Guilin
Confucius say… friend is someone who thinks you’re a good egg even though you’re slightly cracked.

</

The blogger with pinkie up-cups at the Xi'an airport

The people of Guilin appear quite nonchalant about their surrounding countryside, ever so accepting of the limestone pinnacle mountains that abound in this area. It was pictures of this area thirty years ago that first sparked our interest this wonderful part of the world.

And at last Guilin, a small city of only 800,000 which we flew into from Xi'an. From our aircraft we could see that the day was going to be a mountainous surprise packet. We had the usual cave tour, south China pearl museum ( and retail sales!) and a leisurely stroll by the lake near our hotel.

But the genuine reveal came today on the Li River on a tour boat following the course of this ancient waterway through a maze of spectacular scenery. I will let the pictures do the talking.

We are now in the little river port town of Yangshuo and closer to the people; mainly shopkeepers on both sides of the every narrow streets.
Even got to visit an elderly couple who open their 300 y.o. home to tourists. The hand-pumped water well, grinding stones to make tofu, wood burning stove with the obligatory woks and not to be outdone a TV.We got on famously, they being a year older than us at 72

A view out of hotel room window

The mountains come to Isabel complete with rice for good luck
Confucius say… trouble with bucket seats is that, not everybody has the same size bucket.

To know Tracy was to know a committed optimist
An ever smiling young woman with a chuckling cheeky laugh
Warmly supreme characteristics that always abided within Tracy
Negotiating the drive to Perth from York was a challenge she overcame
She courteously accepted her dismissal from the local pharmacy
And proudly stepped up and won a place at the York Council
Even the mean-spirited nastiness of a near neighbour failed to dampen her resolve
Tracy always quietly beavered away; confidently determined to succeed
Her journeys through life were always onwards and upwards
Oh how she confounded so many!

An ever smiling young woman with a chuckling cheeky laugh

But York could no longer fulfil her life’s ambition
To Fremantle she proceeded —- and succeeded
To further complement a well-rounded future
She met and sashayed a shy young Angus
Who relished his life’s partner to be
And together they exclaimed their betrothal at a lavish party
Oh how she confounded so many!

But sadly her future was shattered; and not of her own making
Tracy, we ache for you and your youthful inspiring spirit
And this, written with a pen dipped in tears

An ever smiling young woman with a chuckling cheeky laugh

Bill and Wendy, Isabel and Helen our ( rare Jade) quality guide above the eastern gate of the original walled city of Xi’an. Day by day the continuing sunshine and blue skies necessitates umbrellas.

Xi’an is a small city of eight million and the one time capital of China. Xi’an was the origin of the Silk Road. Silk was the prized commodity and the domestication of pack animals (Chinese Camels) enabled vast quantities to be carted over long distances.

The main traders during antiquity were the Chinese, Persians, Romans, Armenians, Indians, and Bactrians (Northern Afghanistan) and from the 5th to the 8th century the Sogdians (Uzbekistan). During the coming of age of Islam, Arab traders became prominent.

Though silk was certainly the major trade item from China, many other goods were traded, and various technologies, religions, and philosophies, as well as the bubonic plague (the “Black Death”), also travelled along the Silk Routes.

Terracotta Warriors and Horses is a collection of terracotta sculptures depicting the armies of Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China who was based in Xi’an. It is a form of funerary art buried with the emperor in 210–209 BC and whose purpose was to protect the emperor in his afterlife.

The display of 2,000 figures were discovered in 1974 by local farmers near Xi’an. The figures vary in height according to their roles, with the tallest being the generals. The buried Terracotta Army held more than 8,000 soldiers, 130 chariots with 520 horses and 150 cavalry horses, the majority of which remain buried in the pits nearby Emperor Qin Shi Huang’s mausoleum.

As a warm up we visited a ceramic factory where copies of the warriors are made today along with the obligatory retail showroom which included silk embroidery which Wendy and Isabel admired.

Confucius say… if you turn Oriental around, he become disoriented.

Sitting here in the Beijing airport at the Lei Cafe (as in Hawaiian thingos around your neck) and an hour with which to update our Great Wall day of wonderment.

This monumental structure was built 2,400 years ago and there was a similar number of steps to negotiate to get on top of it. But what a champion feeling to walk along an ancient structure, the hard fought, sweated labour of indentured coolies.

Like all walls, the irony is it failed to keep the marauding Mongols out of the big city; Hadrian’s Wall in a similar era fell short of subduing the wild Scots, the Berlin Wall seemed unable to secure east Berliners and even the outstanding Australian rabbit- proof fence came to naught.

At this Wall there was a nodding acquaintance to modernity in the form of Pizza and Arabica Coffee, Subway, Baskin and Robbins stores and free WiFi!

We also saw the Ming Tombs and dolefully the Jade Factory and enamelware works, that both harboured glitzy retail shops with free tea to corral the male species leaving wives un encumbered to be shepherded from counter to counter

The drive home took 4 and a half hours thru kerb to kerb, bumper to bumper Sunday traffic, but our driver (who drives in demolition derbys at the local speedway,) gave a thrilling display of forced entry, lane- changing.

Our guide Selena has been a gem over the past 4 days and it would be remiss of me not to mention all the top drawer restaurants we have enjoyed.

Flight MU2106 China Eastern awaits at gate 59 ready to whisk us to Xian and the terracotta warriors.

Confucius say… getting sick at the airport, could be a terminal illness.

A little rain on the window in the early hours of the morning brought a clear and sunny Beijing Sunday morning.

A rarity, but oh what a bonus and it lasted all day for our visit to the Great Wall. WOW! And many other delights.

But more tomorrow, for today is well and truly spent. Sufficient to note that Beijing is clean, with well manicured hedges and lawn area, brilliantly unique architecture, terrific roads and the very latest Beemas, Mercs, Buicks, Lexus’ and Audis to gridlock the hot mix.

‘Til tomorrow

Confucius say… if you continue to live in the past, your life is history.

Saturday morning and all 15million Beijingers turned up to see Tian’anmen Square.

The fact that only 80,000 Chinese appear each day does not dispel my firmly held opinion that there was in fact a helluva lot more of them this morning.

And who have they come to see?

The Aussie with the white hair. I’d have made a few million today if I got a buck for every photo they took of me. Paris Hilton — eat your heart out — the Chinese paparazzi was focused on only one celeb today.

Moi!

12 year old Danny was the best. “Excuse me! Can I have my picture taken with you?” enquired the open-faced smiling youngster in perfect English. With my approval, his Mum whipped out an iPad and clicked away. We briefly talked about kangaroos and koalas and then the old man wandered on ahead, quietly chuffed at the momentous occasion of our chance encounter.

The Forbidden City is very appropriately named, for a world-wide audience of say 7 billion people are all forbidden to enter and actually see the vast 1,000 rooms and any accoutrements the emperors might have garnered since the place was finished in 1420.

The Forbidden City covers 114 Hectares. Bloody big in any language!

The Hutongs were next, traditional housing with an 800 year old residents’ pecking order, still maintained today and we visited the peasant end of town where they had a cool calm courtyard complete with crickets, canary and cane chairs. We were honoured with a visit to a private residence with the owner lady entertaining us by playing a zither.

By this time your reporter struck serious feet problems and retired hurt to the hotel. Aaaahhhh!

Confucius say… some people are like blisters… they don’t show up until the work is done.

But the valiant remnant of our touring party battled on to the Temple of Heaven and spent a pleasant couple of hours in shady gardens with an exhibition of Ballroom Dancing, Chinese style and imbibing the delights of a Chinese tea house ritual

Confucius say… perfectionist is one who takes great pains, and gives them to everyone else.

Selena our guide with Wendy, Bill and Isabel

Confucius say… your strength lies in your continued belief that what you just ate was indeed duck

At KL airport the shrill wailing of an inordinate number of distressingly tired children, gave rise to thoughts of a pending horror flight to Beijing.

But reality thankfully did not match the prospect; both the parents and the tiny tots were sound asleep as we levelled out at 10k metres, and the ever reliable Air Asia X journey was as smooth as silk and a little after 1am came the big reveal.

Beijing!

We’d arrived and eager for the coming adventure. A new land. An awaiting culture and peoples and things we’ve heard and read of for ages. A courteous passage thru the universal airport arrivals procedures and out into the hurley-burley of the metropolis of 15 million folk. Selina our guide whisked us through the honking hubbub of the car park then the freeway to our CBD hotel.

Friday: Beijing; perfect smog one day; brilliant smog the next

But what the heck! This is not the south of France, not Scotland or Norway. This is a new land; older than time itself and you know what? Everything here is ‘made in China’

Our hotel room is on the 11th floor and I estimate there are two or 3,000 apartments within our immediate vicinity. Some modern, some older style, but with pleasant garden spaces below.

Correction: not everything is ‘made in China’ for at Costa Coffee the cups were made in the U.K. and the coffee in Brazil. And all served with the fond memories of Italy’s Lake Como in the background.

In China 600 people are killed each day by motor cars. Walking in Beijing we tended to use the underpasses to avoid the cars, but the footpaths are beset by bicycles and electric scooters. All good fun!

Confucius say… man who run behind car get exhausted.