Month: September 2014

Yesterday, amid the myriad of ever changing lights of green to amber to red and back to green again*, we bid a fond farewell to China and the city of Shanghai, with its modest population of 23.8 million people. In fact this is a city we would like to re-visit, along with Chongqing.

But before engaging our sea legs we took the Maglev train out to the international airport, it also happened to be raining, and so what else is there to do? The magnetic levitation train has no wheels and does the airport run in just seven minutes at a top speed of 431km per hour. No doubt the doyen of big boys toys!

Aboard the Sapphire Princess we have very quickly put on the mantle of five star deluxe living, with heavenly cloud beds, which greatly contrasts with the granite like slab called a bed in China. On this floating palace meal choices are both eclectic and with the aplomb of cordon bleu. In China you get an enormous variety of flavours from which to choose; serving vast quantities of the most brilliant cuisine.

Tomorrow Nagasaki is our first port of call with Japanese immigration wishing to closely scrutinise all 2,000 passengers visiting for 10 hours or less. I need to write to the Japanese PM Abe and advise him that cruise ships only convey two passenger types. Newly weds and Nearly deads!

Confucius say… question authority and the authorities will question you.

(* with apologies to Peter Sellers ‘Balham’)

The Bund Shanghai

Zhujiajiao old town Venice

Heaps of these vertical growing plant walls at the Bund

The Yangtze is the third longest river in the world, at almost 4,000 miles. A pecking order of the Amazon and Nile ahead of it. Commencing in the mountains of Tibet and flowing out to sea at Shanghai, it passes through some of China’s most spectacular scenery, some of which has been lost due to the Three Gorges Dam.
The concrete and steel dam is 7,661 feet long, almost 600 feet high and used about 510,000 tons of steel – enough to build the Eiffel Tower sixty times. They say the structure is visible from the moon and similarly you could say so is the hole in the ground where the WA iron ore came from for this project.
The power generated by the 34 generators is enormous, providing more than 10% of China’s enormous appetite for power.

Isabel and Wendy admire floral arrangement on Century Sun.
This is a spectacular working river, busy at every time of day and at night. When we boarded the vessel at night, water was flowing downstream at about 10 knots. One misstep embarking and you’d be swept away like a leaf on a swift stream. (Wendy’s minor misstep nearly had her bag arrive at the dam wall several days ahead of her)

The very fine scenery is reminiscent of NZ’s Milford Sound or the Norwegian fiords. Being elevated above sea level the Yangtze is cloaked in a Harry Potter misty cloud. Our cruise ship is not exactly Princess, but is comfortable–when the air conditioning is not switched off!!

Entering the first of the 3 gorges on the mighty Yangtze River

More gorgeous gorges

Without exception, the staff are gentle courteous, ever smiling and obliging, while the management are sticklers for the company rules and shepherding the sheep (passengers) via oft- repeated PA announcements to the cabins. Although Achtung! is softened and replaced with “ladies and gentlemen” the “vee vill ask the questions” is constantly reinforced.

Plenty of grub at the buffet. Nice food too! But one must assume the best cuts of meat go to the Great Hall of the People in a Beijing, with the bony ‘fag-ends’ the favoured preserve of tour boat operators.

On our approach to the first let down of the evening; lock No 1
Navigating the Three Gorges Dam is truly the capstone of these three nights on the river. Sunday night at 9.30pm we entered the first of 5 locks, dropping us 22 metres each time (110m) to the lower river level. What excitement, sharing the lock with a couple of other similar sized vessels.

Our journey ended at what appeared to be a river village, Yichang, which turned out to be a small city of 1.8million. Like everything in China is humongous, filled with thousands of 30 storey apartment buildings. We flew from Yichang to Shanghai, arriving at the Bund Hotel about 6o’clock.

A quick dinner up the street and Isabel and I walked on down to the famous Bund. A very pleasant wide boardwalk on the river with neon illuminated tourist boats plying their trade.

Today we travelled to Shanghai’s answer to Venice, a quaint 600 year old village, Zhujiajiao old town with its canal waterway streets. This afternoon after lunch all but me are doing the Pearl TV tower and silk factory while moi does the blog and grab some shut-eye before the Shanghai Circus tonight at 7.30
Confucius say… who wants to kill a circus troupe, should go for the juggler

China is gigantic behemoth of a country. Everything is gargantuan; our tour company mission statement “you are never alone with China Odyssey” is frankly redundant. Alone? Wherever you find yourself in this country there are millions of people around you with whom you can talk ( or mostly gesture) and both come away laughing. Great fun! Kids particularly also want a picture.

In Perth the construction indicator is the number of cranes on the city skyline. Here we’ve seen hundreds. Thirty on the right side of the road and turn the corner and there’s another 30 or forty on the left. And it is high- rise apartments everywhere beneath the cranes, each about 30 stories and there is literally hundreds of them being built. Where else to house over a billion people?

Friday night in downtown Chongqing ( Chong-Ching) the place is jumping. All the usual 5 star hotel chains, tens upon tens of brilliant new eating places, Prada and Cartier, thousands of excited effervescent young people and massive gaudy garish colourful TV type screens and neon to light up the frivolity, What a buzz! A few years ago this city needed a bridge or two over the Yellow and Yangtze rivers. Voila! Today they have 22 and all as big as Sydney Harbour Bridge.

The Chinese are warm and friendly, smiling, courteous and every last one of them industrious to the very core of their being. How fascinating to think all these people don’t get to vote and get the government they don’t want, while we get the vote and still end up with the government we don’t want!

When push comes to shove I was always of the opinion that it was a Chinese mastery. But not so!
In the crush of a crowd the orientals are very adept at filling even the smallest void ahead of them. If you see them coming, take a half-a-step back and gesture that they should go ahead and lo, they smile courteously and insist you go ahead before them.

The same is not so when driving. You must hold your nerve at least until a fraction of a millimetre of paint comes away from either car. Wimps and the faint hearted do give way to every determined forced entry. Tourist coaches intimidate Mums’ pushing prams on a cross walk, scooter riders never live beyond 22 and the very very old Chinese man pulling a decrepit old fully laden wooden cart, with iron wheels, ignores all and meanders at will across the busiest of intersections

The country roads we travelled out of Yangshuo back to Guilin were once concrete but today are a patchwork of potholes, ruts and ravines with occasional glimpses of axle busting elevated concrete portions. And being wrapped in a shroud of early morning fog, one needs keep a sharp eye out for the occasional farmers market using up the 1st lane and oncoming traffic and trucks appearing out of the morning mist without the headlights switched on.

In every city the roads are usually dual carriageway, (fenced in the middle to stop pedestrian access), beautifully tree lined for mile upon mile, and spectacularly landscaped with alternating colourful hedges. Hedges that are all trimmed by hand, thus creating more jobs. Road and pavement sweepers are everywhere. Another rich source of jobs for all; a workforce with untrammelled right of passage, against the lights, across the biggest city intersections and wide footpaths populated by the masses.

Remember how frightening it was as a kid riding the Ghost Train at the Royal Show? At Guilin airport PA announcements are not exactly mellifluous–sweetly sounding or smoothly flowing; contrarily the voices are always female at about 160 decibels, preceded by a dinner gong and shrill sounding like short-wave radio static which reverberates throughout the lounge area like a sideshow ghost ride.

We have been fortunate to have fine temperate weather each day but humidity can be quite oppressive at times, although there is plenty of air conditioning for hybrid orchid types like us westerners. A word of caution: fitness is mandatory to negotiate the thousands of steps and ancient cobblestones, all with the odd loose flagstones and nary a handrail to be seen anywhere.

Confucius say: Wherever you go, go with your heart