homes along one of the canals
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Off to see the sites of Suzhou
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Performance in garden Master of Nets
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Canals of Suzhou
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Suzhou, The Garden City

Suzhou

Well, the train trip from Xi'an was even longer than the first, 16 hours.... this time, a 6-berth! The top berth must have felt a little like a cocoon.... I don't know because I won the draw and got to sleep on the bottom! We boarded at 6pm and did not arrive in Suzhou until 10am the next morning! Constantinos, the Greek in our group, came down with a bug and was so sick! Not fun at all! He missed most of the day in the garden city.

Jim and I were really tired, but still able to get about. Jim went for a bicycle ride while I explored the streets of Jiangsu province's most popular town. They say the city has a population of almost 6 million, but it felt like a small town! It is famous for both its gardens and its silk industry and is one of the oldest towns of the Yangtze River Basin. Tradition says that He Lu, a semi-mythical ruler, founded Suzhou in 800 BC. Since then it has prospered from its position on the major trading route between the Song capital of Hangzhou and the Ming capital of Nanjing, especially after the completion of the Grand Canal. The town itself is built on a network of interlocking canals whose waters feed the renowned classical gardens that are the city's pride and glory. Suzhou's gardens reflect the true essence of a Chinese garden's "infinite riches in a little room". The designer works with rock, water, buildings, trees and vegetation to produce something very different to the western conception of a garden. The purpose is not to imitate life, but create a serious art form that aims to produce a setting for the contemplation of balance, harmony, proportion and variety in life. There have been gardens in Suzhou since the Song dynasty (over 1000 years).
Enough with the history...... I will post a couple of pictures from our boat ride down the canals of this wonderful city to help you understand why we liked this city the best of all our stops in China!

I haven't mentioned much about shopping, and it should be noted, that compared to a few of the couples in our group.... I was SOOOOO restrained! Then we hit Suzhou. I was still verrrry good, but it was difficult! The silk was amazing!

Our evening in town, we attended a cultural performance in the Garden of the Master of Nets, a taste of opera, traditional music and theatre. With the fairy lights on in the gardens, it had a magical feel and was a wonderful evening. Our guide for the night spoke very good English and explained each small performance beforehand so that we had an understanding of what we were seeing and hearing and helped to make it all that much better. The garden itself is a tiny, intimate garden started in 1140 and restored to its present layout in 1770 and is considered by connoisseurs to be the finest in Suzhou.

Jim and I had been sticking pretty well to our low-carb commitment but Suzhou's other claim to fame was more than our willpower could handle! The city has a long history in pastry making! And it was soooooo goooood! Back to it when we leave but, for a couple of days........ We enjoyed!
Only a day and a half in Suzhou and it was back on the train (this time just a couple of hours) and on to Shanghai! We are already talking about wanting to see more of China on a return visit, some of the south and the countryside, but any second visit will definitely include more time in this wonderful city!

Terracotta Warriors Pit 1
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Terracotta warriors
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Great Wall of China and Terracotta Warriors

The Great Wall of China

UNESCO enlisted the Great Wall of China, one of the greatest wonders of the world, in the World Heritage in 1987. Just like a gigantic dragon, the Great Wall winds up and down across deserts, grasslands, mountains and plateaus stretching approximately 6,700 kilometers (4,163 miles) from east to west of China. With a history of more than 2000 years, some of the sections of the great wall are now in ruins or even entirely disappeared. However, it is still one of the most appealing attractions around the world owing to its architectural grandeur and historical significance.
Regarded by many as one of the world's great engineering achievements, the wall stands between 6 to 9 meters high, is 8 meters thick at the base, and spans 5 meters across the top. Within its length, it contains some 25,000 watchtowers, gates, fortresses, castles, and temples. Beacon towers were spaced approximately 18 kilometers apart, and would use signal fires to warn of invasion. No one can tell precisely when the building of the Great Wall was started but it is popularly believed that it originated as a military fortification against intrusion by tribes on the borders during the earlier Zhou Dynasty. Late in the Spring and Autumn Period (770 BC - 476 BC), the ducal states extended the defense work and built "great" structures to prevent the attacks from other states. It was not until the Qin Dynasty that the separate walls, constructed by the states of Qin, Yan and Zhao kingdoms, were connected to form a defensive system on the northern border of the country by Emperor Qin Shi Huang (also called Qin Shi Huangdi by westerners or the First Emperor). After the emperor unified the country in 214 BC, he ordered the construction of the wall. It took about ten years to finish and the wall stretched from Linzhao (in the eastern part of today's Gansu Province) in the west to Liaodong (in today's Jilin Province) in the east. The wall not only served as a defense in the north but also symbolized the power of the emperor. The present Great Wall in Beijing is mainly remains from the Ming Dynasty (1368 - 1644) Since then, the Great Wall has served as a monument of the Chinese nation throughout history. A visit to the Great Wall is like a tour through the history backwards.
There is no way to visit a site such as the Great Wall and not come away with your mind reeling from the facts surrounding its construction....... the shear magnitude of the project is overwhelming! Not to mention the climb to the top of the wall........ And we didn't have to carry stones or mortar! My legs hurt for a couple of days!
We visited the wall at the Mutianyu site about 1 1/2 hours from Beijing, as there is less of a tourist zoo there. That's not to say that there was not the usual markets and hawkers, loud music and colorful additions (the Chinese love amusement parks and even at the great wall they had built a luge to come down ...if you dared...and had music blaring.) Even with all that, it was an awesome experience to stand on the wall and look in both directions at the miles and miles of structure as it stretched out over the mountain terrain! Wish I could post more of our pictures but not easy on this blog so they will have to wait till New Zealand.

Xi'an and the Terracotta Warriors

We arrived back in Beijing late afternoon, grabbed a bite to eat and some stocked up on provisions to snack on, and headed for our train to Xi'an, some 14 hours away, where the Terra Cotta warriors awaited.
The train trip was an experience in itself.... 4-berth 'roomettes', upper and lower berths. The train was cleaner than Vietnam, (and much cleaner than India as one of the couples in our group who had just visited there pointed out!) but that is not to say that it in any way compared to the luxury of trains across Canada or many other countries! Unlike Vietnam though, there was not even one toilet in each car that had a western toilet, all squat toilets! Uggh! There are times that being a female are tough! We had our own sleep sheets (lovely silk ones from our trip to Vietnam last year) and when exhaustion took over, we managed to get a couple of hours sleep. Some of our group used local pi jou (beer) as sleep aides! Jim took advantage of that to win his first pot at poker in a long time! What a hoot!
We arrived in Xi'an at about 6am and made our way through the throngs to our hotel, where we dropped out luggage and went on a walk about until we could get into our rooms to shower and rest an hour! Unfortunately, the wonderful and unseasonably warm weather we had been enjoying decided to desert us, and our first impressions of this former Imperial capital city were seen in drizzle. We went to the parks at the south end of the walled inner city and say people ballroom dancing, practicing Chi gong, Tai chi, and all sorts of exercise regimes! Some of us even joined in.......I think as much to try to get our bodies to work as for any other great benefit! The center of Xi'an is enclosed by an enormous city wall and with a population of only about 6 million; it felt like a small city compared to Beijing, and is one of the few Chinese cities where ancient walls are still visible.
Our journey to the Terracotta Warriors took about 45 minutes. In 1974, while digging a well, some farmers made the amazing discovery of the Terracotta warriors of Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi (259-210BC), the first emperor who unified China's divided territories into one nation and standardized its written language. (AMAZING how much history we have absorbed!) The State Council authorized to build a museum on site in 1975. Life size terracotta figures of warriors and horses arranged in battle formations are the star features at the museum. They are replicas of what the imperial guard should look like in those days of pomp and vigor. The museum covers an area of 16,300 square meters, divided into three sections: No. 1 Pit, No. 2 Pit, and No. 3 Pit respectively. They were tagged in the order of their discoveries. No. 1 Pit is the largest, first opened to the public on China's National Day, 1979. There are columns of soldiers at the front, followed by war chariots at the back. No. 2 Pit, found in 1976, is 20 meters northeast of No. 1 Pit. It contained over a thousand warriors and 90 chariots of wood. It was unveiled to the public in 1994. Archeologists came upon No. 3 Pit also in 1976, 25 meters northwest of No. 1 Pit. It looked like to be the command center of the armed forces. It went on display in 1989, with 68 warriors, a war chariot and four horses. Altogether over 7,000 pottery soldiers, horses, chariots, and even weapons have been unearthed from these pits. Most of them have been restored to their former grandeur.
I will post one of our photos taken at the museum.
For now, time for breakfast. I will continue to update this blog when we return. Now that we have a connection and my laptop back (did I mention that we left it and some other stuff here in Bangkok when we went to China? so much easier and safer than packing it all with us) and I would like to do the notes on China while it is all still so fresh in my mind.
bye for now

First Days in China

Beijing and the Great Wall of China

Beijing has a population of 16 million and is located in the north east of China. It was our first stop on our trip to China and as Jim has written, it was much more a modern, booming metropolis than he expected. You can see new construction everywhere. Every month, more of Beijing's hutongs ( the narrow alleyways that are home to nearly one quarter of Beijing's residents) disappear as these backstreets are replaced by widened roads or apartment blocks.

In past, China's tourism has been predominately internal, that is, its own people travelling to historic sites and to the resorts within the country. With its huge population, the country has not needed to rely on attracting outside tourists. The Olympic Games of 2008 will change this forever. Signs and t-shirts promoting the Beijing Olympics are already at every marketplace! The government of China is providing English and other language courses for many of the public service people....traffic police must be able to speak a minumum of English in order to aide the huge influx of tourists expected for the games. You can almost feel the wealth and the fast growing economy as you walk the streets! If you are innovative, there are tremendous opportunities in this country as the number of middle class consumers increases rapidly and the number of 'seriously' wealthy grows!

We arrived a day ahead of the beginning of our tour and spent the day wandering the streets and hutongs and getting our bearings. We went in search of the Xiushui Silk Market, small narrow lanes with a good array of outdoor gear, fake designer clothes as well as DVDs and CDs sold on the sly! We did not stay long as the pulling and constant bearage of hawkers was more than we cared for! Quite the market! Gortex jackets seemed to be the best deal of all but we did not need any!

The evening of the 14th, we met our group for the first time and all went out to dinner. What an interesting group we had too! When you book a tour, which we have only done one other time as we prefer to travel independantly, a lot of the success of your time depends on the group that you are with and we could not have asked for better travel companions! Together we represented Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Greece, Sweden, Poland, US, France, Denmark and Ireland and for almost half the group, English was a second language! You can imagine how well we all did with Mandarin! During the course of the next 9 days, we laughed, looked after each other and compared notes for historic knowledge and good market places! We certainly were lucky to be a part of such a great group! We were travelling with Intrepid, a company that works with small groups and, while our facilitator (NOT tour guide as she quickly points out!) took care of booking all the trains and site tickets etc. She was a fountain of knowledge for all our questions, there is alot of independant time allowed in the schedule. No matching hats or megaphones! It is a very good way to get a taste of a country such as China that can be difficult to get around on a first trip.

Our trip was in fact called "A Taste of China", for that is all we had time for in just 9 short days, but we did manage to cover alot of territory!

Our first dinner together was Peking Duck! About 8 of them! and pi jou (beer) lots of it too! Did you know that a duck is cut into 16 pieces for serving? And the food kept coming and kept coming! The bill.....about $12.00 for the two of us! We waddled home late that night! (no pun intended!)

Our first full day with the group, we went to Tiananmen Square, an area of 122 acres, big enough to hold 1/2 a million people. In its history, the square has witnessed the Chinese people's struggle against foreign oppression and reactionary rule at home, most recently and notably, during pro-democracy rallies in 1989. At the northern end of the Square, Tiananmen (Gate of Heavenly Peace) is the national symbol built in 1417. In the imperial days, it was a rostrum to address the assembled masses. On October 1st, 1949, Mao proclaimed the establishment of the People's Republic of China here. The protrait of Mao is a feature of any Chinese photograph taken in front of the gate. It is also a favourite meeting place as the square is so huge and so busy that it is easiest to arrange to meet beneath Mao's picture. As a group, we attracted the attention of a couple of men who seemed intent on hearing the explanations our guide was giving us. We certainly felt aware that there are subjects, such as politics, that are still not freely discussed in this country!

We spent the next couple of hours on a tour of the Forbidden City, so called because it was off limits to commoners for 500 years! Built by one million labourers between 1406 and 1420, it was home to 23 successive Ming and Qing Emperors. A bit of information from our tour guide that stuck with me was the fact that the emporer felt that god had 1000 rooms so he ordered 999 rooms to be built so that he was not greater than god!

The next day was our trip to the Great Wall of China....one of the must see's on my list! I have posted a picture taken there and will write more tomorrow about the trip!

The Great Wall of China
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