Our final days in China were in Shanghai and in the Shanghai area--in a nearby watertown called Tongli. Our visits to the Shanghai Museum and the Shanghai Urban Planning Museum were certainly highlights. The Shanghai Museum is elegant, well-planned, and artistically arranged. I paid for the audio tour and was so glad that I had; it provided highlights and background that were not available on the exhibit labels. The Urban Planning Museum sounds kind of like a ho hum, but it, too, was fascinating. There are exhibits and photographs of the old Shanghai and the new; they have also included their [View Full Entry]

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Traveling out from Suzhou, we drove to Qiyun Shan near the Yellow Mountains. While Qiyun Shan is one of the Daoist holy mountains, very few tourists ever travel there. The nearby Yellow Mountains attract more attention. In fact, our local guide had never been up on the mountain and had to enlist the help of one of the people who lives on the mountain to explain the sites. We thought since we were traveling to the mountains that the temperatures might cool down, but we were wrong. The first part of the approach to the mountain involved a cable car ride [View Full Entry]

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(Due to the server crash at Travel Blog, I am trying to recreate some of the entries that are lost in the ether between China and Texas.) We had a smooth flight from Guiyang to Shanghai and then transfered to the bus for Suzhou, the Venice of China. Suzhou is built around a series of canals and is known for silk production and classic Chinese gardens. Rich merchants often retired to the Suzhou area and built homes and gardens. The area was also known for its highly literate and educated population; so retired civil servants devoted themselves to calligraphy, poetry, and [View Full Entry]

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The Hanging Temple and Monastery in Shanxi Province was both remarkable in its construction and awe-inspiring in its location. It is literally built into the side of a cliff. The monks chose the site and the elevation to protect the temple from floods. Our bus was caught in a traffic jam of coal trucks, so our guide asked if we minded walking down a dry riverbed for a mile or so to come to the parking lot and entrance for the Hanging Monastery and Temple. We were game for the walk, not letting a traffic jam deter us, and hiked to [View Full Entry]

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Our first afternoon in Kaili included a trip to the bird and flower market; it was a fascinating regional market with baskets of spices; cages of birds, exotic animals and reptiles; interesting plants; and piles of local fruits and vegetables. Unfortunately, we were caught in a torrential downpour and were not able to enjoy the market scene. The rain complicated the afternoon trip to one of the nearby minority villages, so we went to a regional museum that had minority dress and cultural artifacts on display. The most interesting parts of the museum, however, were the women artisans who were [View Full Entry]

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Our visit to the Muslim quarter was part bazaar and part religious excursion. The market area leading up to the had much of the typical tourist ware and knock-off designs--watches, purses, North Face, Mont Blanc, etc. The grounds of the mosque looked much like other temples and monasteries we had visited except the gateway arches were in Arabic instead of Chinese. We found the Large Wild Goose Pagoda also situated on manicured grounds, but almost everything is new, refurbished, or redone. The monks are delighted with the attention and the newly restored grounds. Although the restoration i [View Full Entry]

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We were glad to put Taiyuan behind us; we saw a fatal auto accident, road chaos, and monkeys on a leash. The whole city was so chaotic that we felt frankly unsettled. What we saw there, however, was pretty amazing; sometimes it is hard to sort out all the contradictory images--especially when the past and the present collide without any obvious connections. Before we left for Xi'an on the overnight train, we visited a charming city called Pingyao. It is a Sturbridge/Stockbridge kind of town, a walled city preserved from the Ming and Qing dynasties. It grew to importance as [View Full Entry]

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In the recent blog site crash, it looks like the section on the terracotta warriors disappeared. The first emperor's tomb proved to be everything I had expected it to be--amazing and spectacular. The warriors were created more than two thousand years ago by 700,000 conscript artisans and workers, many of whom were buried alive at the emperor's death to keep them from telling where the tomb was located. What we saw in the museum is only a fraction of the army; many, many more figures remain buried. The Chinese have not decided how to excavate the emperor's tomb because the ground [View Full Entry]

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I am pinch hitting for Melissa today as she is in a very remote area near Mongolia. The bus rides in this area are long and difficult because of the extraordinary coal truck traffic on the roads. Delays caused by disabled trucks blocking the roads are common. During one such delay the group hiked the last mile to their destination. During the walk they had a chance encounter with a genuine hermit that lives in a cave near the monastery. He invited the group to tour the cave where several generations of his family have lived. Melissa noted the stark [View Full Entry]

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We visited the famous UNESCO site at the Yugang Grottoes and were lucky to have a gorgeous morning. The grottoes were carved out and the statues sculpted about 435AD. It was really an amazing sight, and I have some terrific photos--they will have to wait on a better Internet connection,tho. I thought you might enjoy some food notes. We have had the most interesting mushrooms--black ruffly ones, clear ones that look like sea anemones, long skinny ones that look like twigs, and your standard morrels--all quite tasty. I am not hallucinating...yet. The food here has been much better than in [View Full Entry]

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