Bye, Bye Beijing - Bullet Train to Luoyang

Saturday, September 24, 2016

Bye, Bye Beijing - Bullet Train to Luoyang

It seems only fair to make some parting observations about Beijing.  It is emmence!  I always thought that New York was the most intimidating city I'd ever ecountered, but Beijing make NYC look like a non-competitor.  Currently there are 23 million people living in an enormous area which is expanding daily, as new construction of 30-40 story high rises replace traditional and soviet style low rises.  There is so much constructioin underway that the Chinese themselves joke about the craine replacing the crane as the national bird.  In keeping with what we saw in the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games a few years ago, bigness and the spectacular effect seem to dominate all design and planning.

That is not to say that is overwhelming.  Big city living is pretty much big city living no matter where you are.  Beijing, and for that matter, China in general, seems to have made that more enjoyable on a human scale, and common use of cramped spaces more inhabitable than most.  Lots of green areas and public parks and exercise spaces, and all are constantly being cleaned and swept by an army of municipal workers.  Over all, I have concluded that I could live very happily there, if only I had an interpreter at my beck and call!  Not likely, I'm afraid.  I have also concluded that I am so over packed!  The temperature has been over 80 and often in the 90's during the entire stay.  A couple of light shirts and some shorts would have served me just fine.  I've made a pledge to myself be become better at travelling.  I still have much to learn.

We checked out of our beautiful hotel (thinking we'd never have it so good again, after all, this is Beijing!) to catch a 10 am bullet train to Luoyang, a smaller city of a mere 8 and a half million and much older that Beijing. The journey was incredible!  Constant speeds of just under 300 kilometers per hour, that's somewhere around 180 mph, and smooth as glass, no bumps, no swaying no clickity-clack.  It even had western style toilets!  Maybe we should turn Amtrack over to the Chinese!  

The main attraction in Luoyang are the Longmen Cliff Carvings which date back to the introduction of Buddhism in China.  There, an entire cliff of exposed limestone has been turned into thousands of statues of the Buddha, ranging in size from true miniatures to gigantic grottos commissioned by emperors and powerful nobility, leaving a lasting testimony of devotion to their chosen faith.  It was somewhat upsetting to see that so many of these ancient works of art have been defaced and vandalized over the years, mostly by foreign invaders taking souvenirs or museums for their collections.  There is enough left to testify the the importance of the site, and it has been declared an Enesco World Herritage site, so that what is left will be preserved for the foreseeable future.

The evening of our arrival, we had a delightful exhibition of traditional and ancient Chinese instruments, and a little concert on each one of them.  An added feature was the various performances by the young students of the lecturer, offering hope that another great tradition of Chinese culture and art is being preserved for at least another generation.  Following our extended morning at the Longmen Grottos, we stopped at an agricultural village for a tour of a contemporary village home (serviceable but very plain.  It appears that Chinese only decorate their pubic spaces ornately) and then to an English class in the village school.  Chinese students universally start studying English in the 3rd grade!  We attemped some conversation with them, but they were embarrassed and we know too much English, so the experiment in cultural immersion was, in my opinion, less than successful.  There are 14 of us, and each one was assigned a minimum of 5 students with whom to converse, in a classroom that was over 90 degrees .... Who would expect much more?

It seems that pictures or no pictures, no blog is making out of China, so you'll probably get all of these in one blast.  I'm sure many of the sites I've mentioned are also available on the Internet, if you are really courious.  Those pictures are probably better that the ones I've taken.  We'll have to wait to find out for sure.

Traditions, transistors and triumphs

Saturday, September 24, 2016

Traditions, transistors and triumphs

I"ve not been successful publishing my first blog.  I think that I may be experiencing a similar problem to one I encountered in the Middle East.  Foreign WiFi connections often cannot handle the additional load of pictures.  If this one is successfully published, I'll go back and remove the pix from the first one.  Those who love the pictures will simply have to attend the slide show, which at the rate I'm going, will take about two days to show!).

Days three and four were also quite informative and spectacular.  Day three began with a pedicab ride through what is left of "old Beijing."  This is an area which has been preserved from urban renewal, which means in China, complete leveling of one and two story traditional residences, and replacing them with thirty to forty story high rises.  In Beijing, as in all desirable locations, rents and/or purchasing prices are astronomical.  Condos in Beijing's first ring are priced at 60,000-80,000 yuan per square meter ($10,000-13,500).  Our pedicab ride delivered us to one of these preserved homes for a home cooked meal served by the lady of the house.  Very good if somewhat plainer than the elaborate and abundant food which we have been getting in restaurants and hotel buffets.  The few families that were able to hold onto their homes are sitting on a gold mine.  These properties are even more valuable than the new high rises.  This one we were in, a modest two story dwelling, is valued at $3,000,000.00!  It pays to be picturesque!

From there we visited the Summer Palace of the Ching dynasty.  A greater contrast is hard to imagine!

The last Doweger Empress loved the Summer Palace and even took money from the Chinese Navy to referbish and improve it.  In outward appearance, it is much like the Forbidden City, but smaller, and definately more pleasant, with gorgeous plantings, creative landscaping, and its own man made lake.  It seems that the Doweger Empress, Cixi, rationalized the construction of this lake with naval money by offering it as a possible, future training base for appropriate officers training.  Pretty thin ratiocination in my book. Since it is not that old, one gets some better idea of the life of the last dynasty, sheltered, self indulgent and cruel, easy targets for a revolution.  All that said, they had exquisite taste and most of the outside statuary and internal furnishings are intact....beautiful to say the least.

We finished our visit with a cruse across Cixi's lake in a dragon boat, befitting an exit from so magnificent a retreat, and went directly to Tienanmen Square, the site of Mao tse dung's mosoleum and rallying point for Comunist Chinese displays of power and "superiority."  Like seemingly all things in China, it is huge, and even on a off day, has hundreds of people milling around, admiring the shear grandiosity of the place, and, of course, waiting in line for a glimps of Chariman Mao, himself.  Fortunately, we did not have time for such a diversion, as we had to get back to the hotel for another sumptuous dinner and preparations for the next day's trip to the Great Wall.

I'm sure that I am not the first person to say that the experience of the Great Wall is indescribable!  The size and extent of even the small section which we experienced is awesome, in the true sense of that word. The section we explored contained not only the spanning of extremely rugged terrain, but also contained towers and command posts which would be impressive in themselves, let alone on top of a moSaturday, September 24, 2016

Traditions, transistors and triumphs

I"ve not been successful publishing my first blog.  I think that I may be experiencing a similar problem to one I encountered in the Middle East.  Foreign WiFi connections often cannot handle the additional load of pictures.  If this one is successfully published, I'll go back and remove the pix from the first one.  Those who love the pictures will simply have to attend the slide show, which at the rate I'm going, will take about two days to show!).

Days three and four were also quite informative and spectacular.  Day three began with a pedicab ride through what is left of "old Beijing."  This is an area which has been preserved from urban renewal, which means in China, complete leveling of one and two story traditional residences, and replacing them with thirty to forty story high rises.  In Beijing, as in all desirable locations, rents and/or purchasing prices are astronomical.  Condos in Beijing's first ring are priced at 60,000-80,000 yuan per square meter ($10,000-13,500).  Our pedicab ride delivered us to one of these preserved homes for a home cooked meal served by the lady of the house.  Very good if somewhat plainer than the elaborate and abundant food which we have been getting in restaurants and hotel buffets.  The few families that were able to hold onto their homes are sitting on a gold mine.  These properties are even more valuable than the new high rises.  This one we were in, a modest two story dwelling, is valued at $3,000,000.00!  It pays to be picturesque!

From there we visited the Summer Palace of the Ching dynasty.  A greater contrast is hard to imagine!

The last Doweger Empress loved the Summer Palace and even took money from the Chinese Navy to referbish and improve it.  In outward appearance, it is much like the Forbidden City, but smaller, and definately more pleasant, with gorgeous plantings, creative landscaping, and its own man made lake.  It seems that the Doweger Empress, Cixi, rationalized the construction of this lake with naval money by offering it as a possible, future training base for appropriate officers training.  Pretty thin ratiocination in my book. Since it is not that old, one gets some better idea of the life of the last dynasty, sheltered, self indulgent and cruel, easy targets for a revolution.  All that said, they had exquisite taste and most of the outside statuary and internal furnishings are intact....beautiful to say the least.

We finished our visit with a cruse across Cixi's lake in a dragon boat, befitting an exit from so magnificent a retreat, and went directly to Tienanmen Square, the site of Mao tse dung's mosoleum and rallying point for Comunist Chinese displays of power and "superiority."  Like seemingly all things in China, it is huge, and even on a off day, has hundreds of people milling around, admiring the shear grandiosity of the place, and, of course, waiting in line for a glimps of Chariman Mao, himself.  Fortunately, we did not have time for such a diversion, as we had to get back to the hotel for another sumptuous dinner and preparations for the next day's trip to the Great Wall.

I'm sure that I am not the first person to say that the experience of the Great Wall is indescribable!  The size and extent of even the small section which we experienced is awesome, in the true sense of that word. The section we explored contained not only the spanning of extremely rugged terrain, but also contained towers and command posts which would be impressive in themselves, let alone on top of a mountain.  Rather than trying to describe what I saw, I'll share some of my thoughts while there.  What most people don't realize is that the mountains on which the Great Wall is built, are very high mountains.  So, my first surprise was that we had to take a ski lift (a long one) to even get up to the area where we cound stand on the wall itself.  Once there, I found myself amazed and perplexed by the means by which this colossus was built, all hand labor, with not even a ski lift to transport the enormous volume of stone and fill all the way to the site, which is hundreds of miles long, let alone build and staff such a fomidable structure(s) which have lasted 1,000+ years.  I was exhausted just walking from the ski lift to the base of the wall!.  There is a "toboggan slide' which one can take all the way down, and I was excited to try it out.  In one of the few disappointments of this trip, it was not available to us at the time due to some earlier passenger screwing up and getting stranded mid-

Saturday, September 24, 2016

Traditions, transistors and triumphs

I"ve not been successful publishing my first blog.  I think that I may be experiencing a similar problem to one I encountered in the Middle East.  Foreign WiFi connections often cannot handle the additional load of pictures.  If this one is successfully published, I'll go back and remove the pix from the first one.  Those who love the pictures will simply have to attend the slide show, which at the rate I'm going, will take about two days to show!).

Days three and four were also quite informative and spectacular.  Day three began with a pedicab ride through what is left of "old Beijing."  This is an area which has been preserved from urban renewal, which means in China, complete leveling of one and two story traditional residences, and replacing them with thirty to forty story high rises.  In Beijing, as in all desirable locations, rents and/or purchasing prices are astronomical.  Condos in Beijing's first ring are priced at 60,000-80,000 yuan per square meter ($10,000-13,500).  Our pedicab ride delivered us to one of these preserved homes for a home cooked meal served by the lady of the house.  Very good if somewhat plainer than the elaborate and abundant food which we have been getting in restaurants and hotel buffets.  The few families that were able to hold onto their homes are sitting on a gold mine.  These properties are even more valuable than the new high rises.  This one we were in, a modest two story dwelling, is valued at $3,000,000.00!  It pays to be picturesque!

From there we visited the Summer Palace of the Ching dynasty.  A greater contrast is hard to imagine!

The last Doweger Empress loved the Summer Palace and even took money from the Chinese Navy to referbish and improve it.  In outward appearance, it is much like the Forbidden City, but smaller, and definately more pleasant, with gorgeous plantings, creative landscaping, and its own man made lake.  It seems that the Doweger Empress, Cixi, rationalized the construction of this lake with naval money by offering it as a possible, future training base for appropriate officers training.  Pretty thin ratiocination in my book. Since it is not that old, one gets some better idea of the life of the last dynasty, sheltered, self indulgent and cruel, easy targets for a revolution.  All that said, they had exquisite taste and most of the outside statuary and internal furnishings are intact....beautiful to say the least.

We finished our visit with a cruse across Cixi's lake in a dragon boat, befitting an exit from so magnificent a retreat, and went directly to Tienanmen Square, the site of Mao tse dung's mosoleum and rallying point for Comunist Chinese displays of power and "superiority."  Like seemingly all things in China, it is huge, and even on a off day, has hundreds of people milling around, admiring the shear grandiosity of the place, and, of course, waiting in line for a glimps of Chariman Mao, himself.  Fortunately, we did not have time for such a diversion, as we had to get back to the hotel for another sumptuous dinner and preparations for the next day's trip to the Great Wall.

I'm sure that I am not the first person to say that the experience of the Great Wall is indescribable!  The size and extent of even the small section which we experienced is awesome, in the true sense of that word. The section we explored contained not only the spanning of extremely rugged terrain, but also contained towers and command posts which would be impressive in themselves, let alone on top of a mountain.  Rather than trying to describe what I saw, I'll share some of my thoughts while there.  What most people don't realize is that the mountains on which the Great Wall is built, are very high mountains.  So, my first surprise was that we had to take a ski lift (a long one) to even get up to the area where we cound stand on the wall itself.  Once there, I found myself amazed and perplexed by the means by which this colossus was built, all hand labor, with not even a ski lift to transport the enormous volume of stone and fill all the way to the site, which is hundreds of miles long, let alone build and staff such a fomidable structure(s) which have lasted 1,000+ years.  I was exhausted just walking from the ski lift to the base of the wall!.  There is a "toboggan slide' which one can take all the way down, and I was excited to try it out.  In one of the few disappointments of this trip, it was not available to us at the time due to some earlier passenger screwing up and getting stranded mid-way.  So for me, it was a return trip on the shi lift, a return to the hotel, another amazing dinner and an intriguing performance by the Beijing Opera which just happens to be located in the very same hotel.  I thought the opera was great.  Others thought it was a trial to sit through, and were grateful when it was over.  I was moved to participate in a tee shirt sale that the Opera store was holding.  That should be no surprise to anyone!

Posted by Gary Lawler at 5:50 PM way.  So for me, it was a return trip on the shi lift, a return to the hotel, another amazing dinner and an intriguing performance by the Beijing Opera which just happens to be located in the very same hotel.  I thought the opera was great.  Others thought it was a trial to sit through, and were grateful when it was over.  I was moved to participate in a tee shirt sale that the Opera store was holding.  That should be no surprise to anyone!

Posted by Gary Lawler at 5:50 PM untain.  Rather than trying to describe what I saw, I'll share some of my thoughts while there.  What most people don't realize is that the mountains on which the Great Wall is built, are very high mountains.  So, my first surprise was that we had to take a ski lift (a long one) to even get up to the area where we cound stand on the wall itself.  Once there, I found myself amazed and perplexed by the means by which this colossus was built, all hand labor, with not even a ski lift to transport the enormous volume of stone and fill all the way to the site, which is hundreds of miles long, let alone build and staff such a fomidable structure(s) which have lasted 1,000+ years.  I was exhausted just walking from the ski lift to the base of the wall!.  There is a "toboggan slide' which one can take all the way down, and I was excited to try it out.  In one of the few disappointments of this trip, it was not available to us at the time due to some earlier passenger screwing up and getting stranded mid-way.  So for me, it was a return trip on the shi lift, a return to the hotel, another amazing dinner and an intriguing performance by the Beijing Opera which just happens to be located in the very same hotel.  I thought the opera was great.  Others thought it was a trial to sit through, and were grateful when it was over.  I was moved to participate in a tee shirt sale that the Opera store was holding.  That should be no surprise to anyone!

The Bering, Beijing and beyond.

Saturday, September 24, 2016

The Bering, Beijing and beyond.

It is 3:30 am, on the morning of my. Sixth day in China, and I am just getting around to my first blog!  There is a good reason for my tardiness.  I've been using all my stamina to just keep up the pace.  I'm not alone, of course.  The sudden addition of thirteen hours to the beginning your day tends to be a little disorienting to one's circadian rhythms.  Breakfast conversation tends to begin with "How much sleep did you get last night?"  And things of that sort.  It's getting better!  Tonight I slept straight through from 8:30 to 3:15, a vast improvement from my first night in Beijing.

The morning of September 1, at 5;00 am, having had a restless night in anticipation of the start of my journey.  I started for O'hare at 7:00 am, exactly as planned, and arrived at the airport a little before 9:00.  I zipped through security and was left with a three hour wait before take off.  The United 747 took off exactly on time, and I spent the next thirteen and one half hours eating, reading or trying to sleep.  There was nothing worth watching on the plane's movies (mostly things I'd avoided at the theatre) and sleep, as usual was hopeless, so I arrived in Beijing Capitol Airport at 3:30 pm, the day after I left, twenty hours more or less after wake-up.  But, it was still only 3:30 pm in Beijing.  There was still more on the agenda!  Fetch luggage, go through customs, find tour leader and fellow travelers, make way to the hotel, register, find room, meet for dinner (in the hotel, thankfully) and crash into bed at 7:30, only to be exhausted but wide awake at 12:30 am!  Circadian rhythms,  bah, humbug!

So, that was day 1 and 2.  On day 3, the tour began in earnest, with a tour of the Temple of Heaven complex, which is an enormous public park, as well as a stunningly beautiful remnant of the days of Imperial China.  The entire complex consists of not only the Temple of Heaven, but other buildings and pavilions also used in that as gathering places, sacrificial sites, and even places for the Emperor to change his clothes.  The size, complexity, and engineering of the place is astounding.  Mostly built over 500 years ago, without modern equipment or technology, it is unimaginably awesome, in the really sense of that word.d. Awe is what it was meant to inspire, and it is still doing it's job 500+ years later.

I'm also going to include a picture of me, trying out the exercise equipment at the Temple of Heaven site.

With my mind still trying to assimilate the Temple of Heaven and its surround, our next stop proved to be even more mind-blowing.  The Forbidden City.

The Forbidden City is the larges place complex in the world.  It was the "city" residence of the Emperor and his immediate family and "accociates," wives, children, concubines, eunuchs, pets, etc.  The Chinese Imperium did not create spaces such as the castles one sees in Europe.  Rather, it used a series of very impressing public spaces, and a whole lot of private places.  When one hears a statement like the emperor being sequestered in the Forbidden City, it turns out to be a rather apt discription.  There are stunningly beautiful reception halls, dining halls, audience halls, but the living space are all surprisingly human in their purporsions, rather like the living arrangements of ordinary Chinese people, rooms around a central courtyard.  Of course, all this comes with priceless furnishings and decoration, statuary and landscaping, befitting an absolute feudal potentate.  I'll include one picture, and I have many, many more, but you can probably get a better idea of the Forbidden City, form watching the fairly recent movie, "The Last Emperor."  It shows not only great shots of the Forbidden City, by offers some idea of how it played into the needs of an aging imperial state.

The day came to an end with a dinner out, featuring Peking Duck, what else.  I crashed into bed at 8:00 that night, and slept all the way 'till 1:00!  So you see, 3:15 is really pretty good.

I'm going to post this as is.  I have much more to write, but I never know what the WiFi can handle as far as bits and pixels and all that stuff.  More, later.

Excitement Builds!

This blog has been inactive for several months because the Peripatetic Parson has been on the move pursuing less spectacular and far less interesting activities connected to retirement and relocation, both arduous adventures without much worth reporting.  Having completed a full year, and still learning about new surroundings and situations, it is, nevertheless, time to hit the road, once again, and start on my "bucket list."

Adventure #1 is a deeply anticipated trip to China, a fascination of mine since my days in the Air Force when information on China was actually job related.  This trip will occupy most of September and will take me to tourist, must-see locations in northern and central China.  The south and west (including Tibet, I hope) will have to wait for a later adventure.

The main purpose of this post is to reconnect with my previous blogs and to make sure that I can still access the site easily.  Having fulfilled the intent of this post, I bid adieu until anon.