mwafercross

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 vision for the future, their hopes and dreams. Most of one floor has a huge scale model of Shanghai. One day we met with Mr. Wang Fuguo, the father of a young man who works ... read more

(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 painting--three very important virtues. They often described themselves as fishermen or hermits to emphasize their distance from the world of government and politics after their retirement. While in Suzhou we visited The Master of the ... read more

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 working on traditional arts and crafts. The women were weavers, silversmiths, and batik artists. I quickly became the group "batik freak." Our trips out of Kaili were delayed because of landslides, road washouts, and two meters ... read more

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 a financial center and offered draft banking. It is quaint and modern at the same time--lots of commercialism. We did visit the Daoist temple and were snookered into some sort of hoodoo fortune telling exercise ... read more

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 contrast of this sort of poverty with the modern, high tech cities of China that she had been in for the last several days. David C The itinerary guide for her trip has this outline ... read more