2008-10-09T07:58:00.000-07:00

It didn’t start auspiciously. Phyllis, Allan, Sue and I had only just taken our seats on the Air China 747 bound for Beijing at JFK Airport in New York when a flight attendant announced that all passengers and their carry-on baggage had to leave the aircraft immediately and await further instructions in the departure lounge. We only learned more information when Sue eavesdropped on the cell-phone conversation of a security officer. The two young men standing at the agents’ counter had been identified as suspicious by the Air China captain and were being investigated. Fortunately, the “Chinese Fire Drill” ended in about an hour, and we reboarded our fifteen-hour flight to Beijing.

Beijing

Now it was Wednesday afternoon, and we met the other members of our tour group at the spacious Beijing airport, who had mostly flown in from San Francisco. Because they and we had followed polar routes from our points of departure on opposite coasts of the U.S., our flight times turned out to be nearly identical and together with one couple who had skipped in from Detroit via Tokyo, all eighteen of us were joined by Hu Xin, our tour guide, at the baggage claim area. Our group included three related retired couples (Ray and Eileen, David and Ann, Roger and Judy), two retired sisters (Anne and Shelly), a couple employed in law enforcement (Dan and Cheri), a defense industry engineer and his wife (Jack and Helen), and newlyweds from Detroit (Vadim and Isabelle). We also met our local guide, Jeff, who would accompany us until we left Beijing.

We rode our bus from the airport to the first of a pleasingly luxurious sequence of hotels that we would sleep and breakfast in throughout our tour, the Beijing Joy City. It was a temptation to sleep once we arrived. However, we had already resolved to eat a genuine Peking Duck dinner at Liqun Roast Duck Restaurant, and the night of our arrival would be the only one in Beijing that our itinerary had left open. So despite the lack of encouragement from Hu Xin and Jeff, the four of us settled into our two rooms, emerged showered and changed, and found a taxi on the street whose driver assented to the directions that Hu Xin had written in Chinese for us. With a little consultation by cell phone with a friend of his, our driver was able to deposit us on an alley that led to the hutong location of Liqun.

This was an impetuous decision we would not regret. On entering the restaurant where we had requested a reservation before we had left New York, we immediately observed a number of smiling diners. We passed them by and sat at a table in a back room with a chopping board for preparing roasted ducks to serve guests. This would allow us to see our own birds before they were sliced into pieces suitable for stuffing into Mandarin crepes for eating. The man who carved the ducks was happy to pose for the picture that would initiate the photographic archival of our China trip. But more importantly, the food he prepared was as delicious as any we would enjoy over the entire two weeks of our journey.

In the morning, our tour began in earnest a few blocks away -- where else?--on Tienanmen Square, facing the Gate of Heavenly Peace. Beyond Mao’s portrait on the Gate lay the Forbidden City. (The various dynasties that made Beijing their capital had prohibited the exit of anyone on their staffs from this large rectangular collection of palatial buildings.) We walked through countless painted wood pavilions in the Forbidden City, each one sitting across a stone or garden plaza from another. Our progress through the succession of restored buildings ended on the north, opposite the man-made hill created with the dirt dredged during the City’s construction centuries ago. That morning on foot validated Hu Xin’s calling it “military training” for our tour.

From the splendor of imperial life, we progressed by bus to a nearby hutong section of
Beijing. Awaiting us there was a parade of rickshaws that carried us through narrow alleys to the home of a Beijing man whose family served all eighteen of us a deliciously unceremonious lunch. He was an engineer and, through a translator, told us about the crickets and grasshopper he trained for fighting competitions. He appeared to be a sympathetic guy, not the same sort you would imagine as a bloodthirsty impresario of cock-fighting. It was also hard to believe that you could train crickets to do anything but chirp all night.

Our rickshaw drivers then deposited us on a broad sidewalk where our bus was waiting, next to a group of musicians and fan dancers. Phyllis and other women in our group joined the dancers as they hopped and swung their arms in synchrony with the cymbals, horn, and drumbeat. I chose to digest my lunch while sitting and watching. That diversion lasted only about 30 minutes, after which we drove to a Tibetan Buddhist replica of the Forbidden City, the Lama Temple. There we learned the proper way to enter and exit individual shrines, the open doorways of which always required one to step over a six-to-ten inch sill. We learned to enter with the right foot first, and to leave with the left foot.

The Temple was fragrant with burning incense deposited in urns of glowing charcoal by occasional worshippers before each of its Buddhas. The final Buddha was the largest of all, 10 meters high and almost as deep in the ground, carved from a single gold-leafed log of sandalwood. It seems the culture of Tibet is more reverently honored in the Peoples’ Republic than the political freedoms of its nationals.

On the way back to the Joy City, our bus joined a dozen or more others in the parking lot of a restaurant that catered to large groups of tourists. Its food was bland, though edible, finishing with the usual dish of sliced watermelon. None of us seemed to mind, as we were exhausted and anxious to rest before the next day’s promised climb--except for at least one of us. Allan made a quick visit to the hotel’s pool and, I guess, had a refreshing swim there before bed.

The morning began early, at 6 or 6:30, so we could eat the sumptuous buffet breakfast, like the ones we would enjoy in every hotel we stayed at, in time to begin a full day outside the city. Our coach drove us north of Beijing to the Bona Jade Store factory where craftsmen worked the stone into statues, carved balls nestled within each other, jewelry—anything you can imagine. We learned about the different grades and colors—illustrated by the story of this year’s Olympics awards, with the medals’ bronze, silver and gold set on progressively more precious discs of jade. We also shopped, and not the last time.

Beijing is protected on the north by a ridge of mountains (about as high as the Appalachians) that seems to stretch out towards the Gobi Desert in the west. They were deemed by the emperors of various dynasties not to offer enough security from invaders; and so the rulers began having walls built atop the ridge line 2500 years ago. We’re told a completed Great Wall attained 3500 miles when China was united under the Ming Dynasty. Today’s government seems to be refurbishing it segment by segment—the section known as Bandoling near Beijing reminds you of U.S. national monuments and parks. It has spawned a community of souvenir shops, restaurants, hotels and other tourist services. Of course, the street hawkers are all around, shouting in English to passing waiguoren (foreigners) and offering good deals on kites, picture books, T-shirts, watches (aka, Rolex), etc. Hu Xin customarily warned us all that ignoring these sales pitches was the best way to reach our destination. In this case, our goal was a long stairway up to a low point in the undulating stone edifice.

The Wall seemed to be crawling with tourists, most of whom headed east where the climb was more gradual, but where there were more steps. Because of the steps, I chose to head west, and so did Sue, Phyllis and Allan. They didn’t wait for me, and kept climbing and walking until the refurbishment of the Wall ended in a wooden barricade. Under the warm cloudless sky, I penetrated two or three towers along the way, reaching a point where a paved path began to parallel the Wall. I was told that the path is used when the crowd of visitors overflows. In fact, maybe because of the harvest moon festival that week, we seemed to be part of an unusually large number of climbers. In any case, the views of the stone fortification threading through forested hills all along the ridge were memorable, even though we learned that Chinese astronauts couldn’t really see it from space. Apparently, some hikers actually do follow the Wall, end to end; however, we only had a couple of weeks to see some of the rest of China, too.

So we returned to the Bandoling tourist center. Sue and I looked closely at a coffee table in a souvenir store there. It was beautifully inlaid and surpisingly light in weight. The sales woman told us it was made from the wood of the "lacquer tree" that loses its heft because its sap is drained to make the decorative shellac for which it is famous. We decided, though, to pass on the purchase. (A subsequent furniture shop attendant in Xian raised her eyebrows when we related the spiel to her.)

After lunch we drove by bus to the Summer Palace. This was the residence in Beijing preferred by the Dowager Empress in the nineteenth century, and contains many structures surrounding a manmade lake. It is not very far from the Forbidden City. I can’t argue with the lady’s selection of this more scenic and relaxing rural location, even though her reputation for brutal queen-ant-like behavior probably put everybody there on edge.

The Olympics had just ended when we arrived in Beijing. In fact, the Special Olympics were underway during our visit. Because of the TV coverage that we all had witnessed, we were curious to see the Birds’ Nest, the Water Cube, the CCTV Tower, and other architectural highlights of Beijing. We only had time for quickly passing these sites in the bus on the way to the restaurant where we had been scheduled to enjoy Peking Duck for dinner. It was a much better establishment than the previous night’s eatery. The duck was good (but not as charmingly served as at Liqun), and the accompanying dishes were delectably piquant.

After we returned to the Joy City, Sue, Phyllis and Allan grabbed a taxi to visit the night market, photos of which Vadim and Isabella had taken the night before and proudly shown to us. The vendors there must have displayed an array of reptile, insect and other unusual foods, apparently startling not only the eyes, but the nose as well. I was too tired to explore any more that evening, so I packed my bags for leaving the hotel in the morning and got some sleep.

Our local guide Jeff led us to the Temple of Heaven, a large garden reminiscent of New York’s Central Park, which on this Saturday morning was crowded with families, friends and other ordinary Beijingers enjoying themselves in common playing pickup games of hacky sac (with oversize badminton birdies) and paddle ball, tai chi, tango and fan dancing, twirling streamers, playing musical instruments, singing, and performing Chinese opera. The traditional centerpiece of the park is the Hall of Prayer of Good Harvests, which represents the meeting of heaven and earth as a circular pagoda situated on a square pedestal.

We left for the airport and on our way went to a restaurant serving what Jeff told us was Old Beijing style food. Our lunch included our third helping of Peking Duck and a varied selection of other well-prepared entrees. In the first of what would be the recurring and well-deserved ceremony that Hu Xin performed, a common tip from the whole group was bestowed on our local guide and bus driver.

Xian

Xian is Hu Xin’s home town, and an early capital of the Tang Dynasty. Hu Xin would therefore act as our local guide. Our first stop in Xian was for dinner; however, the restaurant's food was disappointing and none of us was impressed by the lady who danced in our dining room to the singing of our waitress. Following Hu Xin’s Chinese lessons, I noted the experience as being ma ma hu hu (tigers and horses—not very good). What did put smiles on the faces of us all were the luxurious suites into which we checked our bags at the brand new Titan Times hotel.

Sue and Allan lost no time before visiting Xian’s night market near the city’s illuminated wall and Drum and Bell Tower. Before Sue returned to our hotel room, I listened to the fireworks that announced the official beginning of the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival.

Another ample buffet breakfast was followed by our visit to the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, Xian’s landmark Buddhist temple. It is appointed with carefully groomed gardens and home to 60 government-supported monks (after all, the Pagoda—named after the sighting of a bird over the temple when it was built—is an important revenue-generating tourist attraction). Our next stop was a lacquer-ware factory where very appealing furniture was on display.

A short road trip brought the group to the star attraction of Shaanxi Province, the Terra Cotta Warriors. Thousands of these life-size statues of men, horses, chariots and weapons were sculpted, painted and buried in formation to protect the tomb of the first emperor of the unified China 2200 years ago. Apparently, all the sculptors were also buried before they could tell anyone about their achievement, for the monument was forgotten until 1974 when a few statues were unearthed by accident.

Today, farmland is still being removed from over the Warriors, and a complex of cavernous concrete sheds, tourism pavilions and commercial buildings occupies the site. Indeed, the many vendors who verbally accost each visitor probably make the Terra Cotta Warriors one of China’s primary sources of souvenir sales revenue. Lunch at the tourist pavilion cafeteria was surprisingly good, especially the noodles. If only the Qin Dynasty creators of the Warriors had had the foresight, they never would have buried the statues in the first place.

We returned to see a little of Xian that afternoon, a city that in some ways reminds me of Philadelphia—both of them have South, North, East and West streets (in Xian they meet at the Drum and Bell Tower). Both are former inland capitals. We were then escorted to a fabulous dumpling dinner at the Shaaxi Grand Opera House. Featured in the “Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907) stage show” were Olympics-like rhythmic gymnasts, a group of drummers who looked and sounded like Manhattan “Bang on the Can” street performers, and a formation of masked warriors who simulated a team of Darth Vaders. Tang Dynasty entertainers sure were ahead of their time; or could it be that like paper, gunpowder, etc., these forms of entertainment really were invented here.

More fireworks lit the sky at 11 PM that night. In the morning we visited the mosque and the market in the Muslim part of town. As anchor of the Silk Road through the Middle East to Europe, Xian experienced a diverse palette that still colors its complexion. Despite its historic singularity, we had to leave Xian, eat on the plane to Wuhan, ride the bus four hours to Yichang, eat a satisfying dinner at the Peninsula Hotel, then motor coach our way another hour past the locks around the Three Gorges Dam and meet our ship, the MV Emperor, upriver from the dam. This trying itinerary was made necessary by the Chinese government’s ban on tourist boat traffic in the locks for fear of terrorist bombings during the Olympics. It forced a difficult task on Summy, our cheerful but clueless local guide between Wuhan and Yichang, to inform and divert us while sitting in our bus seats. Thank goodness, this was the only inconvenience the Olympics caused during our trip.

Yangtze River Cruise

I suspect that the steep descent from our bus down to our boat’s berth on the river (220 steps) would not have existed if we had been able to board the MV Emperor in Yichang. There is a funicular railroad on that bank above the dam, but it was not operating. Come to think of it, before the dam the level of the Yangtze at that point was probably lower, making the funicular even more necessary for boarding river craft. Now that the Yangtze is scheduled to rise another 30 meters with the completion of the Dam project, no doubt the funicular will be dormant until a final water level is established.

In any case, we checked into our tiny twin bedroom on the boat and slept there for the next four nights. We lost CNN on the television on the Yangtze and would not recover it for the rest of our journey. We had learned about the U.S. financial crisis when we were in Beijing, not that any of us felt we should do anything in reaction. There were a few pale faces among us when the news first broke, but blood was restored by the millennia of cultures and the natural wonders we were now witnessing.

The big drawback to our long descent to the ship the night before was the need to climb those 220 steps the next morning. Following breakfast, fortunately, I had the shoulder of the ship’s River Guide, Stephen, to lean on. At the top, we boarded our bus for a ride back down river to view the dam and one of the locks in daylight. Our local guide, Sherry, explained that one of the tunnels on that road was unlit because of a dispute between the towns on either end over who was to pay the electricity bill. I guess the commonweal of communism ends at municipal boundaries.

Sherry also explained that the river’s level would rise by around 30 meters during the rest of the year. There has been massive relocation of and financial payments to the people whose homes and farms have already been flooded. But farming continues into the last season allowed by the rising waters. In fact, we would see new fields scratched into hillsides that were made temporarily accessible at this stage of the inundation. They too would disappear under the Yangtze in a few more months. One of our group asked Sherry if all the people displaced by the rising water were free to go anywhere they wished. Her answer: “Of course not. If that were the case, they would all want to go to America!”

We returned to the boat, Stephen lending me his shoulder again for the 220 steps down, debarked and ate lunch as we entered the first of the gorges, Xiling. Here the Yangtze begins a 150 mile valley by cutting a narrow passage through limestone mountains penetrated with mines. A sudden dynamite blast made us aware that the tourism value of the Three Gorges has long been complemented by their industrial value. The warm sunny afternoon was cooled by sturdy breezes as we continued up river into the Wu gorge. On the sun deck, Stephen pointed out the rock formations that delight sightseers, such as Goddess Mountain and Flying Eagle Mountain. As we sailed past the former, Stephen’s colleague, who was guiding a group of German tourists aboard the MV Emperor, sang a lovely baritone Lied that must have honored some highland lady.

Dinner on the ship’s third deck was hosted by the Captain and was well prepared. As usual, our group sat at two tables surrounding a revolving glass disk on which waitresses placed assorted stir-fried entrees, rice, dumplings, soup, and fruit. We learned to coordinate our self-service chopstick or silverware stabs at the intermittently moving platters with few accidents. Drinks were usually bottled water or beer. The evening’s entertainment consisted of a crew show in the lounge. The first bill of fare included women’s traditional and modern dancing, a women’s and men’s fashion show, and a misconceived audience-participation card guessing game hosted by Stephen. Our time spent viewing the crew’s well-meant efforts would have better been spent reading or in bed.

The next day following breakfast we docked at Wushan where we met a local guide, Susan, and boarded a smaller river boat for a cruise through the Lesser Three Gorges on a Yangtze tributary, the Daning. We sailed up the river past rocky cliffs crawling with small animals, including families of Rhesus monkeys. Susan told us about the ancient Ba people who buried their patriarchs by suspending their coffins within caves high up the cliff wall on the opposite side of the river. She assured us that we could see one that has been hanging there for thousands of years. We saw a cave, but only Sue’s photos showed the coffin.

When the river grew shallower and the Gorge narrower, we shifted to a smaller sampan that held our entire group but only on bench seats. One of the boat’s two pilots wailed a traditional song from the sampan’s bow to demonstrate the canyon’s reverberation. By the end of the excursion through the lesser gorges, Cheri, who was born and raised in Wisconsin, agreed with me that they conjured up a remembrance of the Dells.

We were able to double back to the MV Emperor for lunch and for the sail into the Qutong Gorge, the northernmost of the Three. It contains the most dramatic mountain tops of the canyon, and the sheerest, whitest cliff walls. All along our voyage up the river, we had seen signs posted on the canyon slopes marking the 175 meter line that the Yangtze is to reach when the dam project is completed. None of us knew what was already inundated by the river’s rise so far but, frankly, it didn’t seem that much would be lost in the final 30 meters of flooding, except a few islands and a few rows of corn and beans. None of the tourism industry people with whom we had contact appeared to be concerned and, of course, there were no visible signs of protest.

Even back in 1996, when Peter Hessler wrote his book, “River Town,” the people along the Yangtze seemed to have resigned themselves to what surely would be stunning changes to their villages and lives. I suspect their acceptance of fate had less to do with thankfulness to the enlightened policymakers in the government than with a 6000 year history that taught them that certain matters were not their business. The everyday Chinese worker and farmer is responsible for success in his or her microcosm; the King, Emperor or Party does what it must to preserve power on the macro, overall level. There’s no use fighting it.

Following dinner on the third deck, most of our group felt compelled to attend the Crew Show in the Lounge. This evening the passengers had been invited by the crew (really the River Guide) to contribute their own talents. Wisely, Hu Xin had ignored the request; however, the other China Spree group of Americans on board were encouraged by their guide, Bill (a former Red Guard) to participate. Apparently, you did not argue with Bill. The German tour group, as you would expect, also complied with the crew’s invitation.

Our last day on the Yangtze took us to Fengdu, known as “Ghost City.” Something in Chinese folk lore enshrines torture as one of the possible fates that a person’s spirit may meet before reincarnation. For me, the torture came in climbing 600 steps to reach the Buddhist and Daoist Temple overlooking Fengdu, or descending them. Fortunately, there were palliatives, including Hu Xin’s shoulder for balance, a ski lift for part of the way up, and a “sit-down” (or was that “sedan”) chair carried by two “stick stick men” down the MV Emperor’s sloped 200-step dock.

We resumed our sail up river during lunch, and observed how the dam would affect commerce on the shore all the way to Chongqing. High-rise apartment buildings had been constructed in every city on the river, apparently needed not only for relocation of flooded villagers, but also to accommodate the river basin’s share of the country’s population explosion that had led to the one-child policy. We may have passed under a dozen bridges, many not more than twenty years old, that were on their way to being razed in order to allow ship traffic to flow freely on the higher river level.

I was particularly interested in seeing Fuling, Peter Hessler’s haunt as a Peace Corps Volunteer. When we passed it that afternoon, I was surprised by its size and, of course, the number of apartment buildings that had recently been erected. We would not reach Chongqing until the middle of that night, so we did not have a chance to see the lights of China’s biggest city reflected in the water. We disembarked in the morning after breakfast, got a dragon-dancers’ sendoff, and relied on “stick stick men” to lift our baggage from the boat up the dock to our awaiting bus.

Most of our tour group enjoyed the scenery and side trips on the Yangtze. However, China is a long way to go for a relaxing river cruise. We could have enjoyed all the drama of the Three Gorges by riding the hydroplane from Yichang to Chongqing and devoted two more days to seeing China, and maybe even spent time with the people in their universities, shops, farms, or homes.

Chongqing

Our local guide hat morning, Eva, gave us a good introduction to the importance of Chongqing to the WWII effort against Japan, and especially the national leadership role played by “President Chiang Kai Shek.” She never failed to refer to him with that title, displaying a tone of respect that it seems is held for the Kuomintang leader especially in China’s wartime capital. Eva led us to the Stillwell Museum, located in the residence and headquarters of Roosevelt’s commander in the Far East. From there, General Stillwell directed Western support for China’s resistance against Japan’s invasion of the eastern half of the country. He and Chiang managed filling the supply lines via the Burma Road and the airlift of Claire Chennault’s Flying Tigers. As it happened, one of the original Flying Tiger pilots, 85-yr. old Ling Qiming, was in the Museum for a birthday celebration while we visited. The Museum’s collection of photos, memorabilia and narrative panels would require an entire day or more to study adequately and give us a clear understanding of WWII from the Chinese perspective.

We next drove to the Chongqing Zoo for a mandatory viewing of its large collection of pandas. As we motored again to lunch, Eva explained that one of the reasons for the city’s exponential population growth and apartment building mushrooming is that farmers have been abandoning their traditional livelihoods on the land in pursuit of more rewarding jobs in the modern global economy. Left unanswered was whether China would soon rely on foreign sources for its food.

Speaking of food, we were then taken to a restaurant where our first stop was its large kitchen. The purpose of this tour was to show how our Sichuan meal was being prepared—not a cooking lesson, but a culinary spectacle. The flames fired furiously under the woks. The peppery aromas choked our breathing. The cooking oil-splattered floor threatened to slip our footing. In the dining room, our meal included dish after dish of well spiced and mysteriously seasoned meats and vegetables. No one complained of blandness in this food; in fact, some diners begged for recipes.

Guilin

We flew to Guilin on Chongqing Airlines and met our local guide, Gary. The group was in for a full schedule the next two days; so, at our request, he arranged for us to go on a river cruise that night to watch the cormorant fishermen. We boarded a narrow old double deck boat that left the dock with two or three sampans in the water alongside. Each of them carried a gondolier with two ugly long-necked long-billed birds of prey.

The cormorants snatch fish as large as 12-18 inches in lengthin their bills. Their necks are constricted with a cord so they cannot ingest their catch. They are trained to return to the sampan with a fish in their throat and to surrender it to their handler. Lights on the bows of the sampans illuminated the clear river water, in which we could clearly see the swimming cormorants, their dives when they spotted a fish, their return to the sampan and fruitless attempts to swallow until the gondolier removed their catch and returned the birds to the river. This method of fishing has the advantage of not depending on those dumb fish to do the biting—they are so hard to train.

None of the fish we saw caught by the cormorants was bigger than a few inches in length. It would be difficult to make a living this way. Obviously, at least that day, the fishermen earned a lot more income by charging fees to watching tourists. Not that we minded—the show was well worth it, even if not nourishing. Our boat returned to the dock and our bus brought us back to the Guilin Park Hotel, located on a lake and illuminated in red neon lights.

In the morning we boarded a river cruise boat at Zhujiang wharf and marveled at the giant tooth-like Karst limestone formations that projected from the surrounding farmland that was once a seabed. These wooded sedimentary monoliths resemble stalagmites; but there is no dripping cave ceiling. It’s not hard to see why artists produce iconic paintings dreamily speculating on the symbols they portray or the sentiments they inspire. I found a more mundane similarity of one of the peaks to the split stone Rabbit Ears in Routt National Forest near Steamboat Springs, Colorado.

The crystal clear water of the Lijiang (Li River) were also being enjoyed by recreational swimmers, families of ducks, and bathing water buffalo. It appears to be a popular resort area, for attractive large homes line its banks. Following a perfunctory lunch on the boat, we disembarked at Yangshuo and took the bus back north, with stops at the South China Sea Pearl Co. (an irresistible purveyor of jewelry) and the Reed Flute Cave, whose cavernous chambers were impressively illuminated.

Two wedding receptions were in progress at the Guilin Park Hotel when we returned. As in Xian, the brides were dressed in flowing white gowns, but one of the grooms wore sneakers and a tee shirt. (I wonder how “special” that marriage is going to be.) Afterwards, I had a chance carefully to read the guest book in our room and find the long list of English-language swimming pool rules that included, “psychosis is prohibited for entry.”

Shanghai

The next morning, we caught an early flight to Shanghai’s Hong Qiao airport and met our local guide, Li Mai. She led us directly to the Bund, the city’s classic European-style quay on the Huang Po river. Situated there are the ornate Hong Kong Shanghai Bank Building (now home to the SPD Bank) and Customs House. HSBC’s Chinese headquarters are visible in a new skyscraper across the river in Pudong. We raced to the Jade Buddha Temple, where scores of banana-yellow robed monks were chanting on their procession through the ground-floor chambers.

At last, we checked in the Skyway Landis Hotel, another new five-star establishment where the concierge staff was still in training (making their street directions suspect), but the circular swimming pool (apparently a difficult shape to build) and health club was in full operation. We had to leave the hotel after a quick shower and go for an ordinary dinner at the Embroider Gallery restaurant. Amazingly detailed needle work was on display there in which portraits, still lifes, and landscapes achieved photographic detail through only the insertion of innumerable colored threads in the canvas. We then briefly visited the shops on Nanjing Street, and returned to the Bund after dark, the esplanade still crowded with tourists and merchandise hawkers, with views of passing tourist boats (one of them designed as a Dragon) and the sparkling skyscrapers of Pudong.

After another delectable buffet breakfast in the hotel (including sweet poppy-seed bread-like Dragon Fruit), Li Mai led our bus to Suzhou, and told us the ironic story of the city’s four Beauties: each of them had a failing that tempered their luster—big feet, B.O., flat chest, and sloping shoulders. You take your pick.

The canals of this lakeside city are said to be reminiscent (and its residents surpass the back alley behavior) of Venice and its gardens are reputed for their refinement. Some of us were disappointed, however, by the austerity of the Master of Nets Garden at the residence of a Qing Dynasty general. We went to an operating silk factory near Suzhou where the hostess explained the whole process of raising the worms and harvesting silk from their cocoons on the heavy extraction machines we observed. Many of us bought silk comforters, made from discarded cocoons; but, try as she might, Sue was unable to find a silk garment to buy.

That day had been the annual “Car-free” day all over China, instituted it seems to remind the people that there are other efficient ways to travel to work. Certain popular thoroughfares are closed to passenger vehicles. However, what it appears to accomplish instead is to make a horrendous traffic jam all day as drivers contend with unfamiliar routes. We had an early “Hangzhou style” dinner (semi-European cuisine) at Liu Jia (Liu’s place) restaurant so we could make it on time for the popular Acrobats of China show. It reminded me of the old Ed Sullivan TV show, with vaudeville and circus act after act. A few were truly amazing, like the five motorbikes in a steel mesh globe, and some were ultra-boring, like the magician with big sleeves full of white pigeons. Fortunately for Phyllis and Sue, there was enough time left in the evening for Li Mai to bring to our hotel room her friend, Mr. Ping, the tailor who measured Allan and me for new shirts and slacks.

In the morning we were driven to the famous Shanghai Museum. It is very professionally, comfortably and spaciously laid out in thematic galleries presenting large ceramic and bronze collections, for example, and a relatively small room reducing the cultural diversity of China’s minorities to their sartorial differences. The Museum was filled with grade-school children on tour, all of whom were eager to day Hello in English to the waiguoren they passed in every room.

We had lunch at a restaurant serving Mongolian BBQ (i.e. you assemble the ingredients and wait in line for the stir-frying chefs to cook them on a large circular grill). Then we wandered the Yu Gardens bazaar. Roger and I gave up on following our wives from shop to shop, and leaned on a railing along a square facing the Starbucks coffee shop (!). It was a favorite spot for men to watch the passing xiaojie (pretty young ladies). I had the pleasure of chatting with a visiting high school girl from Xian, who was eager to practice her English. She asked me what places I had seen on my tour, and her reaction was “Guilin has good feng shui.”

We motor-coached across the Huangpu River to the Jin Mao Tower, which briefly had been Shanghai’s tallest building. It still houses the country’s tallest hotel atrium in the Hyatt, down to the bottom of which we were able to peer from inside the 88th floor. The views of the city from up there were dramatic as clouds encircled and penetrated the keyhole top of the nearby taller World Financial Center. Alas, Sue had left her camera battery at the hotel and was unable to snap a picture. When I said to Shelly that we could always get someone else’s photograph of that night sky she agreed with Sue: “You never enjoy the ones you have as much as the ones you take.” When we returned to the Skyway Landis, we met Mr. Ping there for another fitting.

Wednesday was our free day at the hotel supplied by Air China to compensate for cancellation of their flight to JFK. We taxied to Ohel Moshe Synagogue, which commemorates the tens of thousands European Jews who found refuge there, even under the Japanese occupation. We then went back to Nanking Road to find a robe for Karen at Silk King. The sales woman there calculated the price on her abacus (all my hand calculators are made in China). The good quality knock-off bazaar, aka Fashion Accessories Mall, was our next stop. Even there, the three lowest floors, filled with store fronts and back rooms, were only tourist traps. The sales persons only invited the persistent shoppers to take the elevator up 40 floors to the real dealing rooms where designer purses and wallets were on sale at attractive prices. When Sue and Phyllis returned from that escapade, we went to the Kite Store and bargained them down from Y 850 to Y 100 for the dragon kite that had been on sale for Y 180 outside the Shanghai Museum. I guess that gave us some satisfaction that we had learned something after two weeks.

We returned to our hotel for freshening up and then took a taxi into the former French Concession. Walking its tree-top domed streets and quaint shops and cafes, starting with the Old China Hand Reading Room, led into a maze of well-kept back alleys filled with art galleries and antique stores. We only had time to get the bare flavor of this amalgam of China and European provincialism. It was not far to the informal, but truly excellent Taiwanese restaurant, Din Tai Fung, where a lady, who spoke English, probably from the front office, picked out our dishes from the Chinese-language menu. The most memorable of them were bowls of soup with stuffed dumplings that squirted warm broth in our mouths when we bit into them.

Our plane to Beijing was to leave the next morning and make a connection there for the flight to JFK. The hotel prepared box breakfasts for us, and we and our bus were ready and packed at the agreed time. Our driver, however, was under instructions not to leave without our substitute local guide, Ms. Wu. She was nowhere to be seen, so our driver called her cell phone only to find out that she was stuck in traffic about another half hour away. She arrived without the cash to pay her taxi fare, so she had to race to the hotel’s ATM. When she finally joined us, she explained that she didn’t know that our schedule was that tight. We would have thought that it was her job to know.

As it turned out, our driver made good time to Hongqiao Airport. We got to the gate in time despite Ms. Wu’s leading us into the wrong ramp and the wrong check-in line. By that time we had scraped together the last of our Yuan to tip the driver for his good work; and said goodbye to Ms. Wu.

What Did We Learn?

Our 747 from Beijing to JFK was virtually full, with a high proportion of Chinese passengers. One of them, an older man, cuddled his grandchild all the way to a destination that probably contained the rest of the child’s family. A smooth arctic crossing, ending with an unusually short taxi from the runway to the terminal, closed with a polite bow at the head of the airplane aisles from our attendants. When we lined up at Immigration, it became evident that the vast majority of our plane’s passengers were Chinese nationals--only a few Chinese-Americans were in the U.S. Passport holders’ corral. It was testimony to the vibrancy of trade relations between to two countries, or the ample disposable income of Chinese tourists.

We returned from China with a surface impression of its geography, the product of its people’s industry, the diversity of its culture. There seems to be a general diffidence among the merchants and the people in the tourism industry we met about the direction that the government has put the country on. The Chinese public is mainly concerned with providing for their own and their families’ livelihoods. A tempting follow-up to this trip would be one that placed us in contact with opinion leaders in China during which we could confirm whether their objectives really are that narrow. (What a patronizing thought—exactly what led to the Opium Wars!)

Good Feng Shui