Travelogue
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They shoot idiots dont they..?
Posted on October 6th, 2007 by mark.
Categories: General News, Travelogue, China 2007.
We’ve definitely landed with a thump! absolutely no sleep on the flight although the others faired a little better. We got through the airport in reasonable time and out on to the maglev train for the exhilarating 8 minute 432Km/hour trip!
Our first welcome to China meal from Jiaxuan, the perfect hostess, was in one of those great fish restaurants that you can see what you get swimming around before you have it cooked and also included other dishes including goose, lamb and beef a cornucopia of delight washed down with plenty of Tsing Tao!
We decided a walk through Peoples Square would let our dinner go down where my family instantly turned into small David Baileys and spent a lot of time saving me from having to take photos for my blog.
Sleep that night included about 4 hours hardly making up for the trauma of the flight the night before followed by Breakfast starting with a typical Saturdays dim sum bonanza, I’m pretty sure I’ll never need to eat again! Startling everyone by showing a massive breakfast for 6 came to about £15
I reluctantly decided to leave the folks the pleasure of climbing Pearl TV tower for the views of Shanghai by themselves followed by the Shanghai exhibition at its base with the agreement to meet up with them on the Bund later in the day. I left to go and visit the local hospital to have a look at my foot which had been causing me some pain over the last wee while. So after a fairly short wait and shifting from one location to the next I was seen by the doctor and quite a few other patients waiting in the same waiting room (privacy values are a little different here, I wonder if its the same if you have a colonic or the rubber glove treatment??) Anyway after an x-ray and a short wait apparently I’ve been walking round for the last four weeks since Walthamstowe festival with a broken foot - so that’s why it’s painful….!
So now conscious of my injury I have now walked around most of Shanghai, introduced the folks to Sichuan cuisine and the Shanghai bar district
Time for bed I think!
The China Tour!
Posted on September 13th, 2007 by mark.
Categories: General News, Travelogue, China 2007.
The next trip starts on October 4th and will hopefully include a whole lot of great places and a few people coming too possibly up to eight for some parts of the trip.
We start in Shanghai then head out to Suzhou, travel up the Yang Zi river drop off to see the Leshan Buddha. Fly across to Xian to have a look at whatever terracota warriors aren’t currently in London travel up to Beijing for the city tour (well for the rest of them I’ll be in a bar somewhere!) fly down to Hong Kong for a few days to reaclimatise then home before the end of October!
The Yellow River
Posted on May 6th, 2007 by mark.
Categories: General News, Travelogue, China 2007.
Huang He Gong Yuan or the yellow river park was our destination for that day. I had read about it in the guide as a place worth visiting, not for it’s temples which it said were very dilapidated and not worth a glance but for the views of the Yellow River and also a nice place for a walk for the afternoon. The one thing I remember reading about the yellow river was that apart from it being the life blood of the region it was also one of Chinas natural disasters with the route the river takes over history has changed by about 300 miles. Sun Yat Sen used the Huang He to defeat the japanese by destroying the dykes and flooding hundreds of miles of farmland and villages in the process.
Taking the local bus out to the park was interesting in its own right we joined the throng at the bus station and stood by the no. 16 bus which looked about ready to depart. One of the bus company personnel directed me towards the end of the queue which turned out to be 3 bus stops away, I guess this was a popular place to visit. It was something of a surprise to actually find what looked very much like a theme park and a well organised one. The recently constructed heads of Huang di and his successor tower over the park and look out across the river. We wandered past large bells which we could use suspended logs to chime if we wished up to the top of a raised concrete area where we could get a good view of the park. The river extending across the flat plateau in front of us was the major feature which dominated everything around us with the rail bridge extending out into the hazy mist in the distance. On turning to the left we could see a range of hills with temples perched right on the top and a cable car stretching up to the tallest peak and a slide which runs all the way down, which naturally we had to try.
Towards the end of the afternoon we took a hovercraft along the yellow river and had a bounce about on some of the mud while trying to avoid being sold a ride on some very hot looking horses (that would be temperature hot!)
Peonies
Posted on May 5th, 2007 by mark.
Categories: General News, Travelogue, China 2007.
Our next trip was to see the Peonies in Luoyang the other option was a trip to Bai Si and yet another temple was more than I could manage so we settled for the gentler option of the peony gardens. Now the only thing I knew about peonies was that they were probably a flower, however I was to find out they were the national flower of China and the gardens of Luoyang was the place to come. As we passed through the entrance the wilted offerings protected under netting was a little uninspiring but I hung in there as there wasn’t a temple in sight. We passed through the initial collection of buildings past what look to be a great collection of vividly coloured flowers showing all of the many varieties of peony, however these turned out to be plastic! We soldiered on through what looked to be the back yard which turned out to be a large expanse of land with as many varieties of peony as you would ever want to see, with scenic bridges and pagodas to sit in out of the sun, there was even a large fake waterfall to frolic in if the mood took you. After a peaceful hour it was time to head back to ZhengZhou and our Hotel for the night.
Longmen Grottos
Posted on May 5th, 2007 by mark.
Categories: General News, Travelogue, China 2007.
The Long Men complex is near to Louyang one of the seven ancient capitals of China I think this was one of the Wei Dynasties. As I had just finished Bamber Gascoignes Chinese Dynasties I was capable of showing off to our guide whose services we had hired for the day. Beijing, Nanjing, Anying, Luoyang, Hangzhou, Xian.This was the hottest day I’d had in China sharing it with many Chinese tourists as we wound our way panting up the staircases lining the cliffs walls of the Yi river, past hundreds of thousands of buddhist images carved into the limestone. Some images over 17.5m in height others no larger than a fingernail. The larger images carved as a means of worship or dedication for various members of the royal family, the smaller images were the ones permitted to the merely wealthy. Some of the images were headless due to the changing religious proclivities of Chinas rulers, oscillating between the indiginous Daoist religion and its richer foreign import.
The opposite side of the river has a number of other images but we passed these and pressed on up the cliff to the temple at the top a garden which looks out over the river.
Tourism at the temple
Posted on April 29th, 2007 by mark.
Categories: General News, Travelogue, China 2007.
Tourism at the temple
The temple and its surrounding area is quite beautiful and the first visit there in the morning had only a few people passing through and we saw more monks than tourists. On a later visit I was there during Wu Yi Jie a week long national holiday. During this time 50,000 people a day visited the temple many of them walking the 1Km from the main gate complex at the entrance to the “Shaolin Scenic Area”. I did try walking in the opposite direction to the main flow of traffic which proved a little interesting as it was very much like swimming against a strong current, there were so many people heading towards the temple it was almost impossible to leave.
The vast majority of tourists in China are Chinese of course, as it can be harder for them to travel abroad than visit other parts of their own country, so over the last 30 years the internal travel industry has grown into a massve operation. In the time I was there the number of westerners I could have counted on one hand. Everywhere I went I drew the usual sort of stares you get in any areas that you don’t see many white faces however this was amplified by the sheer number of Chinese tourists, 50,000 people a day were staring at the weiguoren! I was hailed by the cry of “Hello Laowei!” (sort of hello honoured foreigner) and in one case by a startled 5 year old staring up at me in amazement “bu shi zhongguoren!” (you’re not Chinese). The adults tended to look a bit surprised, occasionally smiled and nudged each other to make sure everyone in the party had seen the big nose but it was usually the kids who tried out their one word of English. In Deng Feng when stopping at a chemist (don’t ask!) three young kids about six years old who where amusingly sitting on the door step sharpening the families large cooking knife on a whet stone, managed after a lot of whispering and nudging each other to ask me my name in English. During the time I was here I only came across one person who spoke English who was checking into the Hotel as I was asking in my best mandarin whether I could use their internet connection, I have been told by independent observers that my pronunciation of “internet bar” leaves something to be desired as a slight tonal variation turns it into “turtles egg”, which for reasons no one seems to be able to tell me is some sort of deadly insult!
The Shaolin Temple
Posted on April 28th, 2007 by mark.
Categories: General News, Travelogue, China 2007.
During the journey to Henan I read through the guide book on what I could expect to find at the temple and the image I was left with was somewhat colourful leading to expectations of a Chinese version of Sodom and Gomorrah. Crowds of merchants hawking all manor of goods fake martial arts schools lining the road all the way to the temple. The noise apparently drowns out everything in the local area - so much for peaceful meditation.
The reality turned out to be a little different to the reports. Shi Yongxin when he achieved his appointment as the 33rd Abbott of the Shaolin Temple a few years ago had built enough influence with politicians and the military to wrestle control of the shaolin temple back from the local government. In the past the temple was an extension of the government tourist service who paid a fee for the upkeep of the temple. Once in control Shi Yongxin cleared out the market stalls, tore down all the individual schools and moved them to nearby Deng Feng and now the place has been replanted with trees and bamboo and is a well kept beautiful place and relatively peaceful too.
Deng Feng is the nearest town about 12Km from the temple, all the schools except for the wushu guan and one campus of the Tagou school has been transplanted into new buildings built for the purpose in Deng Feng. Our local contact who picked us up from the train station and delivered us the our hotel informed us that the Tagou school remained within the scenic area as it would have meant making 13,000 kids homeless, this may be true, however I expect that a school as large as Tagou would have a certain amount of political influence of their own and proximity to the temple adds to their reputation.
The temple itself has had many buildings rebuilt during 2004/2005 to restore the temple to it’s former glory. The first impressions of some of these new buildings are that they are built for the tourist industry, which of course they are, but it helps to note that it has been the practise throughout history that the wooden pagoda style buildings, as they all are, are often torn down when they reach the end of their natural life and rebuilt in the exact same style to last for another generation. So it is possible over hundreds of years to see new buildings built in a Tang dynasty style, continuing a long tradition. Other examples of this can be seen in the forbidden city.
There have been a number of other initiatives taken by the venerable 33rd patriarch Shi Yongxin, which don’t seem to be so widely publicised and like many of the things he’s done seem to be aimed at preserving and promoting the tradition. In the last few years he has re-introduced buddhist scholar monks into the temple, by this I mean monks who are there exclusively to study buddism not Gong Fu there are currently about 50 of these Wei Seng. The number of Wu Seng or warrior monks is between 60 or 80. There is only a total of about 200 people living at Shaolin the remainder being made up of workmen and caretaker personnel. With the fame of the temple I was expecting to see a lot more than 60 to 80 warrior monks especially when there are 40,000 students studying Gong Fu down the road in Deng Feng. However there is a big difference, it does seem that the monks in the temple are actually the ones who want to take their vows and spend a portion of their time in meditation and other religious practices, whereas the students outside the temple are placed their by their parents either because they have shown an interest, wish to become movie stars or body guards or in some cases where the parents are using it as a sort of military school for kids who get into trouble with their peers back home.
Another of Shi Yongxin’s initiatives is a type of forum for safeguarding the future of their art, by looking out to secular martial artists to bring their skills and knowledge into the temple so their systems are not lost and the temple becomes what it was hundreds of years ago - the centre of learning for martial arts.
Photos on the road to Shaolin
The Shaolin Temple Gallery
Ta Lin - Stone Towers
The wushu guan
Posted on April 26th, 2007 by mark.
Categories: General News, Travelogue, China 2007.
The hotel we had chosen was the nearest to the Shaolin temple and also doubled up as the governments wushu training school. This school certainly not as large as Tagou school but more scenic statues of shaolin monks in the ground and patterns of tree trunks sunk into the ground for balance and stance work. The courtyard contained a large statue of Damo.
The rooms in the hotel were large and comfortable. Even one small PC in reception for internet access. The restaurant offered a buffet breakfast typical of small hotels in that it was fairly plain and uninteresting but was included in the price. I only suffered this once choosing either to go over to the Tagou restaurant which serves an excellent breakfast or to shop in the local supermarket and eat in the room in the morning.
Bei Hai Gong Yuan
Posted on April 25th, 2007 by mark.
Categories: General News, Travelogue, China 2007.
Spending an extra night in Beijing allowed us time to have a meeting with to sort out our printing then visit Bei Hai Park
An Oasis to Hong Kong
Posted on April 23rd, 2007 by mark.
Categories: General News, Travelogue, China 2007.
Well the idea of trying out the new budget airline to seemed like a good idea and although with some sense of trepidation and visions of chickens it was a good idea! 75 GBP each way plus tax wow! And as good as any other flight I’ve taken, films - check, perhaps not the latest but not ancient! Food - actually pretty good. Service - as good as anywhere. Only two drawbacks that need to be mentioned, firstly the coffee was truely the worst I have ever tasted and I’ve made camp coffee from old twigs which tasted better; the last thing was that we were delayed and as a budget airline this seems to be a common issue, not necessarily their fault but on arrival they seemed to have low priority in the queue.
We had two possible flights to catch to Beijing and caught the second unfortunately due to weather our flight from HK was delayed so we would then miss our train from Beijing to Henan.
All however was not lost as we decided to stay over in Beijing and our travel consultant got us a good deal on catching the new high-speed train to Zhang Zhou which started last week. So new train shorter travel time with loads of new features and facilities even reversable seats so you can turn them around to play cards with your neighbours and reclinable too very comfortable.
China in October 2007
Posted on December 11th, 2006 by mark.
Categories: General News, Travelogue, China 2007.
The suggested dates for the 2007 trip are likely to be the last three weeks of October after the national holiday is over.
The places suggested so far:
- Beijing
- Shanghai
- Xian
- Leshan Buddha
- Hong Kong
- Yangzi
If anyone has additional suggestions please add a comment to this and I’ll add it to the list.
We’re booking budget tickets to and/or from HK for £75 one way. I think it is probably take a packed lunch and a live chicken but it is cheap!
The Potala
Posted on September 4th, 2006 by mark.
Categories: General News, Tibet 2006.
In the spirit of saving the best until last we decided that we should do this in our last couple of days in Lhasa. This was well worth the trip and even the queue for the tickets as they only allow a maximum of 2500 people a day because they are worried that it might collapse under the pressure of mass tourism and to be fair this is the most visited site in the whole of Tibet.
So you need to queue to book the tickets a day or so in advance and they give you a one hour visit time slot, you have no choice in this. Most of the travel agencies have used their quotas months in advance so if you haven’t got a ticket you will need to take your passport along with you so they can tie the ticket to the individual so no ticket touting is likely.
Once your time slot arrives you take the ticket and queue by the front gate to ensure you are the individual who is supposed to arrive for that time slot you then pass through for the security check and xray. Then off up the hill to the top where the ticket office is. One couple I heard on a previous trip were 20 yuan short of the entry fee and had to run down from the top of the Potala to the bank and back up again to ensure they got in within their time slot, still having newly arrived in Lhasa and suffering from altitude sickness!
This trip was definitely saving the best for last, however once inside no photos were allowed.
In 637 Songtsen Gampo built a palace on the hill. This structure stood until the seventeenth century, when it was incorporated into the foundations of the greater buildings still standing today. Construction of the present palace began in 1645 during the reign of the fifth Dalai Lama and by 1648 the Potrang Karpo, or White Palace, was completed. The Potrang Marpo, or Red Palace, was added between 1690 and 1694; its construction required the labors of more than 7000 workers and 1500 artists and craftsman. The Potala Palace is was the home of the Dalai Lama until 1959.
Click picture to open album
Tibetan Medicine
Posted on August 30th, 2006 by mark.
Categories: General News, Tibet 2006.
Well after way too much Yak it seems that I have developed something of a “delicate” stomach so it seems like a short (very short) trip to the local Tibetan medicine college is in order to further the bounds of science and to see if they can identify the problem.
Mind you if you look at some of the street scenes I’ve included in this photo album you can probably see what caused the problem for yourselves!
Anyway after a short taxi ride I am greeted by an English speaking guide who shows no surprise at my appearance and proceeds to answer all my questions on Tibetan medicine. It appears that the diagnosis is identical to Chinese medicine, it is just the treatment that differs. They offer 3 forms of treatment, massage, herbal medicine and what seems from her description like bloodletting! The Thankhas on the wall of the hospital had pictures of medical issues instead of buddhist ones which was unusual but interesting I think I caught some of these on camera.
Some of the herbs I readily recogonised from Chinese medicine, including ginseng, red dates, liquorice, deer horn and deer penis (yes, they have both of these in stock and are prepared to ship these abroad I have the telephone number if anyone wants it!) and many more, but they also use many typical plants and minerals local to Tibet that are not common in regular Chinese medicine, the minerals I’m not too sure on but they include these in their pills and also yak penis!
OK now time for my check up! The doctor was a doctor professor and one of the most senior in the college who had been practicing for 38 years. He proceeded to take my pulses and look at my tongue and then told me that my condition wasn’t good and I had severe digestive problems amongst other things. Well he hit the nail on the head there, his office was a bit far from the loo for that particular morning but I was holding in there! So after asking some not so subtle questions about the state of my wallet he prescribed me some pills.
Well on getting home I took these as prescribed, which was take with hot water and chew well. DO NOT EVER follow this advice as these were the worst tasting thing I have ever put in my mouth and the taste stayed with you for hours. (I never knew yak penis tasted like that!) I decided that I’d swallow them straight, but since each felt like the size of a half-brick it isn’t easy. Oh well off to the pharmacy!
If you click on the following image you’ll be taken to the photo gallery
Shotun Festival
Posted on August 30th, 2006 by mark.
Categories: General News, Tibet 2006.
The Shotun or Yoghurt Festival is one of the most important in the Tibetan calendar. It is held in the first week of the seventh lunar month. The referance to Yoghurt is the offering the local population give to the monks as they are not allowed to leave the monastry during this period.
We chose Drepung monastry as the site for our Pilgrimage as this offered the best Thankha to go and see as well as the main point for the Lhasa people.
We joined thousands of others moving from Lhasa up the hills to the monastry passing through plenty of peoples requesting alms, many of these were fake monks, even though the locals seem to know this they didn’t seem to mind, we also passed from cloud to cloud of thick smoky insence, made from buring piles of juniper or sage pretty much for most of the day.
Once we reached the monastery we did visit some of the temples and assembly halls but we were drawn away by the sounds of chanting and the long tibetan horns being played from the hillside.
Above the monastery in the photos you will see the massive buddhist Thankha which everyone came to pray before and to throw their recently bought white scarves over from the top as an offering.
Me..? I came to see the music…horns, chanting and one other instrument which I was offered in the Barkhor a woodwind instrument played through a small reed a bit like a clarinet.
This event was reported all over the Chinese news and there were a few cameras about on the day I’m sure my hat must have been in shot somewhere.
Sand dunes and Paddy Fields
Posted on August 29th, 2006 by mark.
Categories: General News, Tibet 2006.
After Gyantse we took a cross-country trip back to Shigatse on our way back to Lhasa through the Qebgyong valley We saw some of the most beautiful summertime scenery in Tibet. We passed through submerged potato fields (apparently these don’t grow too well here due to the altitude) and out into desert and sand dunes. on the far side of the sand dunes we saw cultivated flowers that we couldn’t identify and made it through to the one village in this desolate valley. This was one of the highlights to our trip. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.
Gyantse Dzong
Posted on August 29th, 2006 by mark.
Categories: General News, Tibet 2006.
Bright and sunny the next morning we headed for the dzong (the fort which towers over the town) and sat outside for 45 minutes as the appeared to be working to “flexible” working hours! This was one of the most fun places to visit as the government were using it to show that the rule before the “peaceful invasion” was one of tyranny and despotism under Gyantse’s previous rulers.
The fort itself has pretty much nothing in it except the life size plastic models of prisoners, tax inspectors and a courtroom, with a bailiff sitting on the prisoner as he is being whipped. However you do get a feel for the place and what it must have been like to live and fight here as you can climb over the whole complex and get into most of the empty and decaying rooms. We did however see signs of renovation, hopefully in preparation for more plastic models I couldn’t quite get enough of those!
There is also a monument to all those who threw themselves off the cliff called “jump of cliff” during the British attack on the fort.
I’ve included some photos of the streets of Gyantse as this was quite a bustling town but in contrast to Lhasa the main mode of transport was a mix of truck and horse!
In addition to the dzong is the anti-British Imperialists museum now re-located to the town which gives a sadly hilarious account of the British invasion in 1904. (Did you know we invaded Tibet? Apparently they refused to trade with us!)