The Road to Pipaxi

It had already been a long day of touring in Xian, topped off with quite a late flight out. So when we arrived at the airport of Zhangjiajie in complete darkness, we were a bit surprised to be told, as we boarded the bus, that we would have a ride of an hour and a half before reaching our hotel. There was a little construction on the airport road, we were told. Imagine our further surprise when we started out by not moving. That is right. The bus just sat there at the end of the airport parking lot and did not move. After awhile we did manage to inch into the construction zone and then we did not move at all.

When I stood up to take a look, it appeared that we were not able to proceed because we were stuck behind other buses, which, you guessed it, were not moving. And we waited . And we waited. It seemed there was a line of buses coming from the other direction. They could not move past us and we could not move past them. So we all waited . One oncoming bus seemed to be attempting to get around the back up, but was not making much progress. Why? The major difficulty was that that bus was behind a car which was stuck in some pretty deep mud. The entire road was nothing but mud.

After a good twenty minutes or so of this stand off, all the passengers of that bus got off and starting walking through the mire, past our vehicle, and towards the airport. They after all, must have been heading to the airport for the purpose of catching a plane, and that plane was not about to wait just because their bus was stuck in the mud. So off they went, every one of them, moms holding babies, and dads holding the hands of toddlers and clutching duffel bags and suitcases as they scurried through those muddy depths, gingerly trying to maintain their balance so as to get to the plane all in one piece. Thank goodness for our headlights, or they would have been navigating that nasty path in complete darkness.

I have no idea how we finally got past the problem, but our bus driver did a phenomenal job squeezing through an incredibly tight spot and moving on down that road of black. This night, as it turned out, would be the most memorable one of the trip.

Yes, the powers that be had decided it would be a smashing idea to replace the only road to the airport. And the best way of doing so, apparently, was to tear up the entire thing, all at once, all five miles or so of it, and just let all the airport-bound traffic do the very best they could with what was left of the road.

Just add to the picture, a line of three-foot high brick lined sewer openings right down the middle of that very narrow thoroughfare. Any vehicle traveling through had to navigate around these crazy things. Could the engineers might have decided to place these three foot high obstacles over to one side of the road? Sure. But they did not. No.......they placed them right down the middle, leaving scant space for a car, let alone a large vehicle such as a tour bus to pass. It seemed clear that the Chinese government, which is working hard to get tourists to come to this phenomenal region, had somehow forgotten that tourbuses are big and wide and need a good solid road, and that they carry the people bringing the money.

It took us forever to inch through this interminable maze of hazards. I could not keep my eyes open the entire time as it was just a little bit too scary. But we did at long last get to the end. And though it was night there was plenty to see when we got to the paved portion of the road.

My daughter, who had been studying environmental science this year, could see in the dark, small patches of corn growing up the steep slopes of the road sides. Subsistence farming, she said this must be, and explained that when you see crops planted on marginal lands such as these hillsides, you know this is not a corporation planting for profit. This kind of farming is done only by those who need to plant in every nook and cranny in order to have enough food to eat.

On the way, we drove through about the longest tunnel I have ever been in. It was deja vu all over again. First I had thought that muddy construction route would never end and now I was wondering if this tunnel would ever end. I read later that this two mile long tunnel was constructed last year at a cost of two hundred million dollars. This is all part of a plan to bring more and more tourists to the region.

We saw an accident along the road. A large truck pulling a canvas covered trailer had hit a motorcycle,which lay mangled under the front left tire of the truck. We did not see the driver of the motorcycle. Hopefully he had not been badly hurt, but we did see a crowd of people gathered around talking with the driver of the truck. We had read that accidents are settled up on the spot in China. The parties are expected to get out of their vehicles, discuss the situation, make some kind of financial arrangement, exchange money and move along. Perhaps that is what was going on here in this discussion we witnessed.

As we drove along I tried very hard not to look at the side of the road. Rather than having a shoulder of any kind, the road was bordered by a sharply cut out gutter......these gutters looked to be about two feet wide and about 18 inches deep. Between the road and the gutter, there was nothing. And yet we sped down the road, around curves, close to the edge. Had we veered just a few inches off course, we would surely have had trouble. It did not seem like a very safe road design to me, and it probably is not terribly environmentally friendly either, as run off water would collect and move quickly through these gutters, gaining velocity, which would be detrimental to the non concrete stream beds it would inevitably join downstream.

Twice along this dark road we saw men sitting in chairs on the side of the road. As we approached, we saw that they were seated next to a pile of watermelons. Watermelons were in season for the entire duration of our China trip and these fruits were being guarded in the middle of the night, on the side of the road. But who would buy at this time and in the darkness? Potential customers could be seen. Even though it was dark we could see people walking along the road, presumably on their way home from work. Could the men seated on the side of the road been waiting to sell melons to shift workers headed home at night? It seems incredible. I have never seen anything of the kind before, but I have no other explanation.


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Incredible Food and Dining in China

A bus tour apparently comes with a tremendous amount of restaurant eating, and we visited restaurants generally twice daily. Sometimes we were arriving at an odd hour and would be the only customers in the restaurant. Almost always, we were greeted at the door by a cadre of uniformed servers, the doors flanked with three or four restaurant employees on either side. Two would hold the doors open for us and usher us in in their best English which in all cases was much better than any of our Chinese. Often these were dressed in lovely silk outfits of the most beautiful colors; the outfits were matching, sometimes red, sometimes yellow, sometimes lime green. At one occasion, all the servers went outside when we were done eating, and they played music on some large drums at the entrance to a hotel high above Zhangjiajie. That was quite a sight to see.


I do not believe I will be eating Chinese food again anytime soon, good though it was.......there was just so darn much of it. Most meals were served at a round table, to a group of about ten of us. Each table place would be set with a small plate.....a very small plate......and a pair of chopsticks, with possibly a bowl for soup and perhaps a cup for tea. The size of the plates varied from sandwich size to saucer size. In other words, they were always quite tiny, meant, I suppose, for putting just one or two items on at a time. Each table was fitted with a lazy susan and the food would come out one dish at a time. You never knew what was coming, nor how much would come thus you would never have any idea how much to eat and of what. Some offerings were very familiar to us and some were completely new. Most of the food was not part of an ensemble dish of any kind, but rather would consist of slices of meat, for example, or a plate of one kind of vegetable or another. Soup never came out first. In fact, when the soup would come, you knew the meal was drawing to a close. Rice would follow this, and then would come the watermelon. Sometimes the first dishes would not be particularly appetizing, and so you would choose from among these, and find the most palatable and have a few more pieces of that just in case there was nothing better coming in the meal. But inevitably an incredibly tasty dish would come out next. Eating too much of what we did not like, and a little bit more of what we did like led to a massive overload of calories, it seemed, leading most of us to skip an occasional meal entirely at one point in the trip. Never at any restaurant did we finish what was brought to us--there was just too much of it.

Sometimes we had dumplings and sometimes we had sliced of meat. one of the most unusual things we had was a goose liver jello. this came on the first night and I was thinking after that meal that I might actually lose a little weight in china. we had an unusual corn dish.....the corn was popped and held together with some non sugary substance and pressed into a round pan and cut into pizza like slices for serving. we had a number of various kinds of dumplings at several meals, and these came in shapes and types I had never seen before. I really did not think to take photos of all of these foods until just now, so what you see on the page is what we managed to get just by luck.

Twice we ate in family homes and these were my favorite meals, coming with things i do not ordinarily associate with Chinese food. for example, potatoes and tomatoes. there was a lot of bok choy served and quite a bit of something called winter melon, which is served cooked.

Published originally 7/20/2007 12:18 AM

Zhangjiajie

The in Flight magazine promised us unicorns. Among the many animals we were supposed to be able to see in Wulingyuan National Park, were unicorns. Monkeys I thought were a slim possibility, along with the many other animals noted in the article...... but unicorns? This I was not so sure about even though I was sure we would indeed see amazing things in the incredible National Forest Park of Wulingyuan, home to thousands of sandstone spires, some of which are a thousand feet high.

And we were not disappointed. Wulingyuan was well worth the trip.

We had lodging in the Hotel Pipaxi, just outside of the park, and collected our picnic lunches after breakfast and then walked down to the park entrance. I was not expecting such a high-tech system. Our thumbprints were applied to our entrance ticket, which we were told not to lose because we would use it again the next day. This was yet another example of leap-frog development, of which we saw so many examples in China. When you are building a brand new park, why not install the very latest in entrance gate technology?

We walked in and divided up into two groups. One group chose to follow the river walk option, the path along the Golden Whip Stream. My group headed straight up and would eventually be on top of one of the spires. The way was paved in quite a wide path of stone steps which started out past a forested area. We walked a bit of a distance before we finally realized that those trees were full of the promised monkeys, quite a few of them climbing in the trees. They were a lot of fun to watch.

I had been concerned about not bringing too much in to the park. I assumed we would be "packing out", or bringing back out everything we had brought in, but did not consume. I was of course, thinking of the parks in the states, where trashcans are simply not to be seen, very often due to budget constraints. Parks have discontinued trash removal services. But in China, this does not appear to be a problem. The park had trashcans on every landing. We were surprised to find stepping stones in the middle of the wide paths. In some places, there were oversized footprints made of concrete, and they were placed at differing heights, to make walking on that part of the path a bit of a challenge.
I certainly was not going to pursue that option, as this walk straight up the mountain was plenty difficult enough for me as it was. The group just bounded up the slopes, the stairs, the landings, just going, going, going. I lagged behind a bit. I can do that kind of climbing, but not at such a pace, so I did the best I could to keep up. I was glad when we finally reached the pavilion. This was a large covered structure. A couple of small groups were eating, and we came in and stopped for a short break. But in just a few minutes the break was over and it was time to head all the way to the top. I really was not quite ready. So I stayed behind, thinking I would rest a bit longer and then head up on my own, to see some of the highest part of the walk.

But this was not to come to pass because one of the groups which had been picnicking left the area, and the other group invited me to join them for their meal. This was very nice of them, and I did not want to refuse, but it was just a little difficult because I don't speak about a dozen words of Mandarin, and these men spoke very little English.

The four of them were seated on log chairs. In the middle of the low round table was a boiling hot pot full of soup. This was surrounded by a huge number of dishes.

to be continued

Carrying Things and People

China is full of things which need to be carried, and these are very often moved in ways we are not used to seeing at home. The variety and volume of things which are hand-carried, by means of cart or small wheelbarrow is amazing. Above you see a massive number of rattan chairs being transported on a pull cart. It is hard to understand how two mere men even managed to balance all of these things on this piece of equipment, let alone wheel it across busy streets keeping it all in one piece.

Children are very often being carried on the backs of bikes. This is something we see at home as well, of course, but
at home this occurs mainly as a form of recreation..... whereas in the China, the bike is being used as daily transportation. All the bikes are fitted with some kind of basket, and this is necessary because the bike will be used as a means of going to work, or for shopping, or for school. No one in China, however, is wearing a helmet. Safety does not seem to be much of a concern on Chinese roads.

Bikes are not the only means of carrying people. There are more and more cars on the roads nowadays. And huge numbers of buses. We saw plenty of tour buses on the highways, and many a municipal bus in the cities. The fascinating thing about the city buses was that they always had people on them. In some US cities, the buses are called the Metropolitan Transit Authority(MTA). One is tempted to call these things the Empty A as they very often go by with not a soul riding aboard. This does not occur in China. There are just too many people and they all have somewhere to go.

Something we had never seen before was a strange phenomenon which one might call a bed bus. These are double decker buses which have 18 beds on each level, six rows of three. We saw half a dozen of these on the road from Suzhou to Shanghai full of people lying down in the middle of the day. What a way to travel. I really don't know who is riding these bed buses and whether they are used daily by part of a workforce which lives in one city but works in another, or whether they are used by people traveling long distances within the country.


We saw a tremendous number of trucks on the highway. At first I thought this was simply because China has become the factory to the world. Everything seems to be made in China, and once it is made, it has to be shipped out to parts East, for the most part.But news reports indicated that truck traffic was particularly heavy on our last day in China, when we saw this parking lot of 18 wheelers on the highway. A new exporting tax was due to take effect Sunday, so all factories were rushing their goods to port in the days prior, to try and avoid the tax on any completed product they had on hand, waiting to ship.

We saw yet another way of carrying things about when we visited Donghan Village in Huxian County to learn about peasant painting and to have a meal with a local family. This lovely little village is a sweet clean place with quiet streets. The homes are all connected, as is always true in this country where we never saw so much as one single-family home. Each building was fronted by the smallest strips of soil bordering the sidewalks, and each of these strips was intensively planted with herbs and vegetables of all sorts. We managed to capture this quite common sight.....a person pedaling a considerable amount of produce on the platform of a large tricycle cart. In this case, the woman is carrying large flat crates of eggs.

Shanghai

The Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Center was quite a sight to see, not only for us, but also for Spain's King Juan Carlos I and Queen Sophia, who dropped by with Shanghai Mayor Han Zheng after they concluded a a meeting at Shanghai City Hall. We were quite lucky to be in the two story hall just at the time the King arrived, because they dimmed the lights for him and his entourage and lit up the ginormous model you see below, which The King viewed from the balcony up above where were standing. News reports indicated that the King was on a one week trip through China at the time, hoping to encourage the making of its national exhibition hall in the World Expo Shanghai 2010 into a permanent showcase for Spanish culture and art in China, and to encourage the teaching of the Spanish language throughout the country.

As you can tell from the model, Shanghai has big plans as well. You are seeing only a very small slice here of the model of the city, which sprawls across a very large room in the two story viewing area. It took us quite awhile to walk around the entire model, and it is most inspiring to think about the future which China has planned. A large percentage of the buildings are not yet started, but plenty of construction is proceeding apace and Shanghai already has one of the most impressive skylines in the world. We saw signs of construction everywhere. Piles of things lay all about, most often piles of bricks. Bricks were just everywhere you looked. Also in evidence, however, were piles of bamboo for scaffolding, and piles of metal rods to be assembled for scaffolding. At the sites of skyscraper building, we saw workers wearing hard hats, and we saw fences separating the construction from passersby. This was different from the smaller construction sites, where no very few precautions were taken to protect either the workers, or those who might be walking nearby.




The Huangpu River cuts through the city, as you see in the model above. "Pudong" which means East of the Pu is the skyscraper-stuffed area across the river from The Bund. Currently under construction is what will be the largest building in China, and perhaps the world. Things happen fast in China. Just 17 years ago, that area was nothing but fields.

Pudong is also home to the Oriental Pearl Tower. In this photo, this rocket shaped building looks small only by quirk of perspective. It is at 1,535 feet, the tallest tower in Asia. Our tour group climbed to the top to see the city from above. Generally speaking when a tourist climbs such a tower, the tourist wastes quite a few hours and learns nothing about the country, or the people, but just sees a bit of a hazy birdseye view of a bunch of streets and buildings. You can climb these towers in city after city and see virtually the same thing. But in this case, we did encounter something rather telling. The glass viewing area was labeled with arrows, distances and names pointing to major cities. Beijing was noted. Hong Kong was mentioned. Xian was somewhere in between the two. Chongqing, the largest city in China was certainly listed. But when we walked around the circle thinking we would next see Sydney, and Delhi, Johannesburg, London and New York, instead we saw nothing. Nothing but blank glass.

Construction

Construction happens all over the place in China......and much of it does not look very safe. We were on the bus back east to Shanghai after a day trip to Suzhou when I snapped this photo of a makeshift highway-side construction tent. The second photo is just a detail of the first. This appears to me to be a sheltered central work area. I have never seen such a setup in the states so I am not clear on what this was for. The only roadside support facilities I see in the states are temporary roadside cement mixing facilities and completely enclosed, air conditioned, trailers which serve for the office needs of a construction site.Someone more knowledgeable about construction might be able to puzzle out what some of the equipment here is for and what kinds of work are being done. Perhaps all of this work is work which would, in the states, be done off-site and then shipped to location after manufacture. The place appears to be slapped together in a very haphazard way with what looks like bedsheets and corrugated metal lain atop some skeletal structure to serve as something like a roof. I can't believe any of this would stand up to much of a breeze. As does most work in China, the work here is proceeding in the open air and not in an interior air conditioned space. A very great deal of work in China happens outside. Restaurants were often missing a wall, and cooking would proceed at the front of the facility, basically on the street. I saw a row of about a dozen florist shops along one street in Shanghai. All were storing flowers in open air spaces, and some were cutting the plants and making flower arrangements right out on the sidewalk, amidst the pedestrians walking by.This roadside construction site is a rare one at which workers were wearing hardhats. Most construction on small buildings and streets which I observed in China was being completed by people wearing street clothes and shoes which might have been loafers or some such. On one site I observed from atop the Xi'an city wall, five people were working on a second story deck. The rebar had been lain, and the cement had not yet been poured. They were standing in different locations atop the structure and appeared to be hammering or fastening the rebar in some way. Four of the workers were men; one was a woman. All were wearing street clothes, and none was wearing anything for foot protection other than regular street shoes. Certainly none were wearing steel toed boots and none was wearing eye protection or a hardhat. As usual the construction site was not marked off and was not secured. Another woman had just climbed up to the rebar deck area and was hanging her laundry to dry up there in that dangerous spot.There seemed to be two kinds of construction areas--one for small projects, such as a several story building, and one for large projects such as road building or skyscraper construction. Smaller construction would happen absent any safety equipment at all. Scaffolding always looked unsafe and the crews were small, often just one or two people who appeared to be puttering. There was never any power equipment in use or visible anywhere near these small sites. Larger construction sites, such as those for the building of skyscrapers looked more like what I am used to seeing in the states, with large crews dressed in protective clothing, and using power equipment. Many construction vehicles could be seen in these jobsites and they would be bustling with activity.

Beijing Hutong

We had a great day visiting a hutong in Beijing. Our entire group of 34 travelers plus 5 guides rode through the streets of a Beijing hutong in a long line of red vehicles topped with yellow fringe. Each was operated by a single smiling driver, responsible for peddling a pair of us through some of the narrowest streets imaginable. We started in one section of the hutong and ventured out onto a busy street. Apparently the right of way goes to the pedicab line, because no one bothered us, when we broke right into the traffic. We rode along for about a block and entered via alleyway, another part of this very old section of Beijing which is now a protected historic area. The neighborhood consisted of a large conglomeration of generally windowless, grey homes set around courtyards and connected together by a network of dingy streets. All along the way, there were shops peeking out from doors and holes. I had never grasped the meaning of the term “a hole in the wall” until this day. Shops and eateries were operated often not from large spaces, and not even from rooms but rather, from simple holes carved in the cement covered walls……



All of these shops were quite dark. Either they had no electricity, or the few fixtures they had were not turned on. Some f these tiny places consisted of no more than a person seated inside of a door way, hovering over a single bowl of vegetables offered for sale.


In the shop pictured below, we see some loose noodles lying in an open plastic bag on the lower left corner, next to a box of what might be radishes......On the right we see large bottles of something which could possibly be juice, or which might be some kind of oil. These appear next to milk crates full of bottled beer and in front of other milk crates holding I am not sure what kind of fruit. What I did not catch at the time is the large bags of open pet food standing on the step. We see a pink bag of Whiskas and an orange bag of Pedigree dog food. I get the impression that customers would not buy the entire bag, but might just purchase a scoop or two, to get through a short period of time. Behind these bags we see two bowls full of what may be eggs, but it is very hard to tell. Behind the two ladies standing in the doorway, sacks are piled high inside the storage area of the shop. These appear to be rice. And two buckets appear behind the jars, one bright orange and one in hot pink. These also say Whiskas on the side, so this is perhaps more cat food.



Another shop featured a plank set outside, a top a couple of crates. Plum, radishes, cucumbers and a bag of green beans were for sale. A window above held bok choy, some spring onions and a scale. Two stacks of plastic bags were nailed to the wall and a white sign in red characters was displayed above.The neighborhood was very a very large, of narrow alleyways. In some places there was room only for our line of pedicabs, and one very precariously passing bicycle, teetering between us and the wall. I know this quite well because as we traveled, several peddling peddlars came right along side of us and tried to sell us postcards, jewelry and all manner of trinkets. Buyao, sie sie, we would say over and over again. Our guides had taught us as the polite way to say something like, I don't want any, thank you... and we had so very many chances to practice this phrase in China.
In some places we saw new doors being hung, and the ubiquitous piles of bricks standing and waiting for you-are-never-quite-sure-what . Piles of bricks lie everywhere in China...in this community, evidence of the gentrification well under way for this Beijing community which truly is one of the most expensive places to live in the city. Having seen a few new and well manicured highrises, this was difficult for us to believe, but the appeal of the historical district and the comparatively less crowded living conditions is quite strong, I suppose.The homes were large and rambling, and laid around courtyards. You could not tell where one ended and another began, because they were all connected together . At one time these courtyard homes would house one family, an extended family perhaps, but just one. Now they are each multifamily housing, with at least four families or so, sharing a courtyard. We listened to very elaborate explanations of who stayed in which part of the house, all determined by Feng Shui.
Spirits can come into a house, but not if there is a threshold because spirits cannot bend at the knee. Hence, each house in the hutong, had quite a nice high threshold. Further, if spirits were to get in, they would be foiled by walls in front of them, as spirits are not able to turn corners.

Something enters a house from the northwest and goes out through the southeast opening, but I cannot recall what…….good luck? Not sure. But each house is constructed so as to have openings at these directions. Everyone in the family had a specific room to sleep in, and again, I believe this was determined by feng shui, such that the parents would sleep in a certain room of the home, with the eldest son in another certain room. Other sons would share a room of lesser benefit. Daughters got no room at all, but slept outside in the courtyard.

Ah, but at least these were very NICE courtyards. The one which we visited was a magical place , quite large and dominated by nice big trees. The edges were formed of a platform all along the edge of the four connecting sides of the home, all under cover of an overhang. Beautiful tile adorned the gutterless roofs. The edge of the roof was slightly upturned, as you would expect the roof of a pagoda to be...this I suppose, helps to slow down the rainwater as it falls off the roof. The walls were of a grey brick and the woodwork adorning the windows and the doors was ornate, in emerald green and in red. We also had quite a lesson in the meaning of color in China .......red is the color of happiness in China, which is why brides wear bright red silk dresses, and green is the color of the people.


From the raised platform, you could walk down two or three steps into the courtyard garden, where you could walk along brick-paved paths, each surrounding little plots were vegetables and herbs were growing. Bird cages hung in one section, as did gourds attached to a wooden drying structure you could walk into. Flower pots stood about i n groups. Red paper lanterns and banners displaying characters hung in from the overhang

As the group stood and watched a kite making demonstration, I had the most amazing thought. For a moment I must have forgotten just where I was. I thought to myself, “I bet this is the exactly the kind of thing I would see were I ever to visit the REAL China. I had to pinch myself back to my senses to remember, that yes, I was IN the REAL China, the China which I had read so much about in the storybooks of my youth, and which I had come to believe was a closed country……a country which I would never have the opportunity to visit.


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