Blogs from Yangtze River, China, Asia - page 4

This morning we had a calligraphy class in an art museum. it was different from home because you use a paint brush instead of a pen and you write on rice paper. It was really difficult. Then we purchased a panda painting and a folk art painting both done by local art students. Then we drove to the airport and had a group lunch. Beer is the drink of choice at meals. They do not have diet soda at our meals, just coke, sprite, and beer. We flew for about an hour and landed in Choungjing, at least that is close to how it's spelled! We went to a really pretty zoo to see pandas. We were lucky to see five of them since it was raining. They stayed out long enough to get movies and ... read more

SORRY, but this is going to be an incredibly long-winded blog (everything about China is out-sized, even our blog), so if you like, just skim the titles and if you see something that catches your fancy, READ ON … and skip the parts that don't grab you (of course, it's ALL incredibly fascinating!). Big Brother in China might be watching over you … but if you skip some passages, we're NOT! CRUISING the Yangtze (Chang Jiang) from Three Gorges Dam A quick hop of a flight west from Shanghai to Wuhan on good ole China Eastern Air (they provide meals on flights of 1.5 hrs …gotta love 'em!) and another 4.5 hours (285k) by bus on a very new expressway across beautifully scenic farm country to the town (it's a town because it ONLY has 4.5 ... read more

I finally got to do one of the top things on my China To Do List (it really does exist, and will sadly not be satisfied this trip due to time constraints): Go on a river cruise up the Yangtze River to see the Three Gorges. To get to the cruise, we took a sleeper train to Chongqing (not the first sleeper train, and not the last). It is the largest municipality in the world with 29 million people (almost the size of my home country, Canada) but is not a destination that has much to offer sightseeing-wise, other than a never-ending sea of high-rises. After arriving, we had five hours to kill, so we went to a square where the bus that would take us to the boat was to pick us up. We quickly ... read more

Before the 20th Century, rugged mountains virtually isolated Sichuan Province from eastern China, and it was only a 400 mile stretch of the Yangtzi River (Chang Jiang in Chinese), linking the huge city of Chongqing with the city of Yichang in Hubei Province that opened Sichuan and the West to eastern China. The journey was a perilous one, as the Yangtzi River came tearing through the "sheer-sided" Three Gorges. The 3 Gorges "were" marvellous, though dangerous. Boats could only make it upstream with the help of "trackers". These were teams of low-paid men, who were harnessed together, and pulled boats, inch by inch, through the torrents of the Gorge. Paths cut into the banks of the Yangtze made the work somewhat easier and a little less hazardous. Some of them are still visible above the "new" ... read more

We actually made it up for sunrise this morning as we knew when it would be. We were out on the deck at 6am to watch it and we stayed there for an hour and a half before being called to breakfast. The views in the morning we truly stunning and it seems as if the river just gets more beautiful the further along you go. The water is getting clearer and the peaks to either side of us are breathtaking (James - think Milford Sound but bigger and going through it for three days). Breakfast was again a Western style which we loved. We spent the rest of the morning on deck, sunbathing, reading, dosing, taking pictures and enjoying the gorgeous scenery. At around 7.30am we went through the first of three Gorges and it ... read more