Trip to China

Trip to China
China September 2007
“Journey of a Lifetime through China”
I went to China because I believe that China is the social and economic event of the twenty-first century and I wanted to understand the Chinese culture, their history and their future. My primary motivation was as an investor, I looked for a tour that would give me an overall view of the country and its many cultures. I chose China Focus’s 29 day “Journey of a Lifetime” that stared in Beijing then visited the Silk Road in Northwest China, The Three Gorges Project and Tibet along with the traditional highlights of China. I took over 1200 pictures and each day wrote in my travel journal and I emailed my observations to friend and relatives.
August 31:
We toured Beijing today, a city of 17 million people, 6 million cars and buses, and 3 million bikes; saw Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, The Summer Palace, and The Great Wall. All were impressive but the Forbidden City and Summer Palace offered limited access. In many cases our viewing was limited to peering through windows at artifacts, not like the Biltmore Estate where you could feel a part of the history and grandeur. None the less it was humbling to think that I were able to experience over 2000 years of history and gain some understanding of the Chinese culture.After one day in China I feel better about the money I have invested in FXI, a China ETF, than any investment that I have ever made over the past thirty five years. I feel like I have gathered inside information today. The Chinese people are the most disciplined, gracious, hard working people I have ever seen. In our twelve hours of travel today I saw no litter, no graffiti, more history then I could comprehend, flowers in the street medians, and smiling people. It looks like Beijing has a fifty story building owned by every Fortune 500 Company, as well as every major European Company. Beijing is building an entire new sports complex and housing for the 2008 Olympics that will make all past Olympic hosts look like minor league cities. Their main stadium, the Bird Cage, and their swimming facility, the Ice Cube, are both futuristic and inviting. I wish I were a young athlete who could look forward to participating in this event.
Our guide, a 27 year old married woman explained the one baby rule that has been in effect now for thirty years and ended by saying, “This is good for China’s future so it is good for me and my family.” She explained the three exceptions to the rule: If you are of a minority race, any of 56 tribes other then Han you may have a second child. If your first child is mentally retarded you man have a second child. If you are a farmer and your first child is a girl you may have a second child. China’s goal is to reduce their population to one billion by 2020. If the policy is broken a fine is assessed and the child is not issued a National ID Card which will bar the child from attending school or being employed in China, thus the illegal child will be destined to poverty.
September 1:
There are eighteen in our group eight couples and two older women traveling by together. Our second day in Beijing started in The Heavenly Park in the center of the city. We arrived at 8:15 in the morning and found a sea of bicycles in front of the park gate, inside is the Temple of Heaven built in 1420 during the Ming Dynasty. In the middle of the park are grassy and concrete areas that are used by groups of people to exercise. A group of fifty senior citizens was practicing ballroom dancing to music provided by their instructor. Our guide explained that there is no organization and no charge, “these people show up everyday and dance for exercise, the drill sergeant instructor is a volunteer; this is how our senior citizens get their morning exercise.” In another area there were a group of ladies doing ribbon dancing with long colorful ribbons flowing through the air in a synchronized movement. A group of both men and woman were doing precise moves with sabers and another with hand fans others practice Kung Fu.
Later in the afternoon we caught four hour flight to Northwestern China and arrived in Urumqi. Urunqi is a mining city, oil, natural gas and coal, home of 2 million people and growing. Urumqi is rough, and in disrepair. Able one of the men on our tour who had been in Beijing eight years ago said, “Urumqi looks like Beijing did in 1999.” Urumqi has become a key point for the transshipment of goods from interior China to Central Asia and Russia much as it did thousands of years ago when it was a stopping point on the Silk Road. Urunqi is the largest city in northwest China, and is recigonized in the Guinness Book of Records as the most distant city from any sea in the world at a distance of about 1,400 miles from the nearest coastline. As we drove from the airport to our hotel I was reminded of Pierre South Dakota and Cheyenne, Wyoming thirty years ago, with wide streets and merchants of all kinds doing business at the street side but with an additional 1.95 million people thrown into the mix.
September 2: This morning we drove two hours north of Urumqi to the Lake of Heaven, which sits at the base of the Bogda Mountain Range. As we drove north of the city I saw thousands of apartments being built to accommodate the influx of inland Chinese coming to Urumqi for work. Hundreds of apartment building jutted up from the baron dessert adjacent to coal mines and new manufacturing plants. It was apparent that we were in the desert. On one side of the road was a new plant and apartments being constructed while on the other side was a heard of camels and a yurt belonging to a nomadic Cossack with their herds of horses and sheep.
As we turned east we climbed the foothills of the mountains to go to the Lake of Heaven; here we saw more Cossack yurts but this group has given up the nomadic life and is now attempting to make a living off the growing tourist trade. We obliged them by eating in one of their restaurants and visiting one of their yurts for a cup of hot goat milk tea. I don’t recommend either.
Lake of Heaven is a tranquil mountain top lake that is in stark contrast to its surroundings. To a westerner it is beautiful, but nothing we haven’t seen many times before in most parts of the US and Europe, but to the inland Chinese vacationer this was a picture of heaven, clean water, clear blue skies, a boat ride and a picture next to the lake in native costumes. Many of the Chinese visitors chose to spend the night in one of the available yurts for rent and dine on the local cuisine of mutton kabobs and Chinese beer. For me the trip to Lake of Heaven had more to do with the thousands of Chinese tourists and the Cossack way of life then the beautiful lake. Our guide is a young Muslim girl who provides a unique look at the diverse cultures of this area. She explained the courting procedures and customs and what she looked for in her future husband. She even explained how she avoided the “arranged marriage” that she had been presented with. “Before I can marry into a family I have to have the approval of my mother-in-law to be. I will have to spend a day with her and perform chores and serve her family to gain her approval. I didn’t want her approval so I spilled tea on her husband and didn’t clean the dishes well. Now I can choose my own husband.”Much to my surprise there are not many Americans in this area, in fact other then those in our tour group I have not seen another American in the two days we’ve been here in Urumqi, at the lake it was mostly inland Chinese on holiday.
September 3 & 4: This morning we went to the Xinjiang Regional Museum in Urumqi. It was with great delight that I recognized a piece of textile embroidered work as the Forbidden Stitch, a tedious embroidering done by the servants in the Xing Dynasty for the emperor. When the Xing Dynasty was over thrown in 1887 most of this kind of work was stolen and few examples are left in China. The Forbidden Stitch was then banned by Chinese law because of the damage it caused to the eyes of the craftsman. I believe the 9 foot by 5 foot silk scene of a rooster and chickens is of this period, there is no telling what it might be worth. Later in the morning we spent two hours in a Muslim bazaar. The venders were selling dried fruits and nuts, knives, food and clothing. The purchasing procedure is to get a price and offer them 25% of the asking price then negotiate up to 50%. I found that if I walked away at 40% they would chase me down and take my offer. We then traveled over the Mountain Range and crossed the Gobi Desert. Along the way we saw the Gobie Wind Farm with hundreds of windmills that generated part of the electricity needs for Urumqi. After a two hour bus ride we arrived in Turpin, a small oasis city of 400,000 that is known for its grapes, being the second lowest city in the world, and the ancient city of Jiaohe.
Jiaohe dates back to 500 BC through 1500 AD. It is unique in that the city was dug in the mud between two rivers thus the entire city is made only from mud and stone. Only the rough remains of the city stands now, and the rivers on either side were almost dry. But the evidence of a thriving city with a unique structure is evident.
In Turpin we were able to see what I thought much of China would look like, stone and mud huts, people moving goods by donkey pulled carts or bicycle carts, women washing clothes in the stream, and poverty. After dinner eight of us left our castle like hotel, with brick walls and a marble driveway, and walked down the street past the surrounding huts to a village center in Turpin. This is where the city people meet to eat and socialize every night. The warm air was filled with the smell and smoke of the men cooking goat head, mutton, chickens, and vegetables over charcoal fires as more people arrived on their motorcycles and bikes. I talked with two young men; one was attending the University in Urumqi and the other in Shanghai and found them to be content with their lives but wishing to learn at the University and move to the big cities. One would be studying business and finance and the other information technology. I turned to find a gathering of people watching our conversation and straining to see the digital pictures that one of my companion was taking. An older man dressed in the traditional cap and heavy coat, even though it was 95 degrees at eight in the evening, wanted to touch me and have his picture taken with me. The young boys told him that the Americans would send him the picture over the internet. Jan, one of our group who speaks Chinese told me that the old man said, “I have a daughter, you marry and take to US with you.”
In the morning I could see and smell a wood smoke hanging over the city from our four story castle surrounded by tens of thousands mud huts cooking breakfast over an open fire, while off in a distance was a cell phone tower and high voltage power lines. We spent the afternoon at the Bizaklin Caves dating back to the 10th century. This is where the Buddhist Monks came to get their live in harmony before they pass on to the next existence. They were in a bad state of repair having been destroyed by Muslims when they invaded in the 13th Century. The day ended with a visit to the Kerez Water System. In the 1400’s the Emperor decided that he needed to help the nomad people by creating an oasis in the Gobi Desert at the foot of the Tienson Mountain range. They knew that the melting snow from the mountains was creating underground streams, so they needed to find the streams and create a channel for the water to feed to the oasis. The Chinese men dug wells until they hit water, then turned their digging horizontal and continued to dig underground towards the waters source. Every 50 meters they would dig another well down to the water so as to make it easer the get the dirt out from the channel below. Where they started their digging near the future Oasis they were digging twenty meters down to find eater, by the time the reached the main source at the foot of the mountain they were eighty meters below ground level. This digging went on for two hundred years. When they were done they had over 5000 water sources, the longest being 12 miles the shortest a quarter of a mile. The Kerez Water System is still in use today providing water to grow grapes and meeting the people’s needs. We boarded a train at 10:43 pm for an over night trip to Dunhuang, an eleven hour trip, I wouldn’t recommend it, but it was our only option.
September 5 & 6I woke up on my birthday on a train sailing through the Gobi Desert, destination Dunhuang, China. Although Dunhung is a city of only 150,000 it is a much more westernized city then Turpin. This is because the people in Dunhuang are Hans and the people in Turpin and Urumqi are Muslin. Dunhuang is also in the Gobi Desert, but the Gobi Desert is not a desert of sand but of dirt and gravel. So a sand dune is not common. The Singing-Sand Dune is five kilometers (about three miles) away from the city of Dunhuang. As we approached it on our bus the mountain looked like a golden dragon winding its way over the horizon. The sand had many colors ranging from red to yellow, green, black, and white as the sun set. It is said that when a strong wind blows, the fast shifting sand roars; but when the wind is a light breeze, the sand produces gentle, dulcet sounds like music. There must have been a thousand camels here with a very definite enterprise system. Older men sold tickets to ride the camels, 60 Yuan or $9.00, they passed the customers off to the herder who might own twelve camels, he then put together a group and handed the riders to a young woman who would lead the string of 12 camels on the hour walk to the top of the dunes and back. At eight o’clock as their day drew to an end the moneys started changing hands from the ticket seller down to the lead girls and the stable hands. This created a lot of shouting and calling but it never got anywhere close to violence it just seemed to be a part of the daily ritual. Our guide Freddie, his American name, told me that an elementary school teacher makes 25,000 Yuan while a dentist will make 125,000 Yuan; Freddie’s wife was a dentist. I think the ticket seller at the camel concision beats them both. James, our tour guide, found out it was my birthday, he started the evening meal with a toast with what smelled like turpentine and tasted like grain alcohol and turpentine, he called it Chinese Fire Water. The evening ended with a beautiful cake with red roses and other flowers sculpted in icing and Happy Birthday Kerry written on it. The Chinese have not mastered sweets, the icing although beautiful had no taste. Again James came with the Fire Water.
The next morning we went to the Magao Grotto. The Mogao Grottoes of Dunhuang, popularly renowned as the Thousand Buddha Caves, were carved out of the steep, rough rocks stretching about 1,600 meters along the eastern side of Mingsha Hill. Construction began in 366 AD. and continued for the ensuing 10 or so dynasties. In 1900, a noted Taoist priest, Wang Yuanlu, discovered a cave at the site which contained more than 50,000 sutras, documents and paintings of nearly 10 dynasties ranging from the 4th to the 11th century. The Mogao Grottoes is where the Buddhist from India first established a presence in 400AD. Inside the caves were magnificent Buda’s, mostly life sized one over 36 meters tall. At one point James shared his personal feeling about what China is going through. He said that, “China is going through a big change, five years ago I could not say what I am about to say with out loosing my job or worse. All we used to know about the United States came to us through Radio Free Europe and much of it was censored. In the early 90’s the Chinese stopped censoring and we started to understand the Capitalist System. We recognized that your lives were better then ours and we needed to change, but we can’t change to fast or we will end up like Russia, and we don’t want that. The way we are changing now may be hard because we don’t have all the freedoms that you have, but we will and are children and grandchildren will.” Then he said something that set me back. “You have Jesus, we have Confuses. Confuses gives us guidance and from our families and ancestors we gain strength.”
The food here varies with each Providence, the North is salty, the East is sweet, the West is spicy, and the South is strange. This is what I was told by our Beijing guide. Each meal is served at a large round table seating nine, in the center is a Lazy Susan that the servers set bowls of food on and you take what you want and put it on your plate. The largest plate I have seen so far is 5 inches, between the small plates and chopsticks you don’t end up eating all that much. The food in Urumqi and Turpin was mostly lamb, chicken and fish (Carp, Yes brothers they eat carp) and a lot of vegetables and rice. It looks a lot like the Chinese food that you get in the US but the parts are all separate and you mix them together as you like. Here in Dunhuang, we’re eating more chicken, beef and pork.
I came to China wanting to get to know China, out here in inland China I think we are seeing China as few have, as we travel we are usually the only fifteen Caucasians among thousands of native people and tourists. (Two of our group are Chinese from San Francisco and one Taiwanese who now lives in Washington D.C.)
September 7: Last night we had the worst dinner so far. Michael one of the men in our group is a doctor, he was able to identify the knuckle sized meat in one dish as cartridge. He explained that the Chinese like to experiment with texture in their meals. I hope this trend doesn’t make it to the US. After dinner we attended a floorshow of Chinese music and dancing. It was put on by a troop of young Chinese girls and boys ranging in age from sixteen to eighteen; they were very professional the costumes were bright and flashy, and the girls were beautiful. The highlight for me was the girl with a thousand hands and the singing Chinese cowboy.
Our next destination was Jiayuaguan, a six and a half hour bus ride. Halfway to Jiayuaguan we stopped for a potty break and I engaged two young Chinese men in conversation, which consisted of “Hello”. Alex our guide stepped in and I found out that they were migrant workers who had traveled 600 miles on their bus with forty other men and woman to pick cotton. The faces of these people tell a story of hard work and hardship, but when you engage them that all goes away, they are just happy to talk to an American and have their picture taken. They will be paid 200 Yuan a week for their work and then will move on to another area hopefully to pick more cotton. Two hundred Yuan equals $22.50 for a week of back breaking work.
We are still in the Gobi Desert, a desert of gravel and little sand that consumes two providences. At the side of the road for our three hundred mile journey men and woman were shoveling the desert soil to build a culvert connecting to a distant lake to create another Oasis that will some day be a thriving Chinese city. We arrived Jiayuaguan, a city that was nothing more then a village of mud huts five years ago and is now a city of 150,000 with 30,000 working for China Steel. Two years ago the prime minister of China announced that China would no longer be dependent on foreign steel, that was just as China Steel was hitting its stride. There is nothing old in Jiayuaguan, it is a totally modern and vibrant city. As I write this I hear the music of a concert outside my window, it’s not Rock and Roll it’s classical Chinese music. These are proud hard working friendly people, Nita and I walk among them at night the only two blonds within twenty miles and a three year old Chinese child walks up and says, “Hello, what’s your name?”Today we visited the western end of the Great Wall of China; it is anchored by a fort that was built in the 4th century. It stands as it was with little restoration because through all of China’s turbulent history none of its many warring factions came this far west into this god forsaken part of the Gobi Desert. We also visited a three room tomb of a businessman who died 1500 years ago and was buried with his wife. This tomb is thirty-six feet under the Gobi Desert in the middle of nowhere and here are eighteen Americans climbing the steps up and down to see this guys living room, dinning room and bed room; he and his wife were buried in the bed room the other two rooms contained symbolic paintings and drawings. Oh, yah this guy had three wife’s and four concubines. I assume he died first, how was it decides which of the seven women would go into the tomb. As you can see there are a lot of unanswered questions here in China.The music just changed to some kind of Chinese Hard Rock, the female singer is screaming at an erratic beat. This could be a long night.
September 8: We started the day at the Saturday market in Jiayuaguan, this is not the same as the farmers market on Findley Avenue. We got a first hand look at what we had been eating over the past two weeks. Sides of beef , pig, lamb and goat hung from hooks and people walked up and pointed to what they wanted and the proprietor cut it off.Across from the many butcher stalls were women in a squat position hovering over red three gallon buckets each containing one of the internal organs of the cow, pig, goat, or lamb egger to assist the stream of patrons. Further down the isle we found the fish display, each species swimming in a plexiglas tank or displayed in an open case. There was a noticeable absence of ice throughout the market. Nita has yet been able to find any chocolate anywhere. The fruits and vegetables were the best I have ever seen, green onions six times larger then we grow, peppers, red and green twice the size of what we get in the states. We have come to realize that this area is not visited by many Caucasians; because we get more stares then we give. We left the Gobi Desert at 2:15 pm boarding Shanghai Air for a two hour flight to Xian a city of seven million people, the Silicon Valley of China, whose main crops are corn and wheat, and produce much of China’s coal, natural gas, and oil. Xian is one of the birthplaces of the ancient civilization in the Yellow River Basin area of the country. During Xian’s 3,100 year development, 13 dynasties placed their capitals here. Xian is recognized as an equal to Athens, Cairo, and Rome as one of the four major ancient civilization capitals. This evening we visited the Big Wild Goose Pagoda; it is called Big Wild Goose Pagoda according to ancient stories of Buddhists, one day, they couldn’t find meat to buy. Upon seeing a group of big wild geese flying overhead, a monk said to himself: “Today we have no meat. I hope the merciful Bodhisattva will give us some meat today.” At that very moment, the leading wild goose broke its wings and fell to the ground. All the monks were startled and believed that Bodhisattva showed his spirit as an order for them to be more pious. They built a pagoda where the wild goose fell and from that day forward stopped eating meat. Hence it got the name “Big Wild Goose Pagoda”. Tomorrow we will be visiting some of its other ancient sites. Xian like Beijing is a big city with big city problems, air pollution, traffic, poverty on the streets, but little crime beyond pick pockets. It is apparent that crime is not tolerated in China, there are no such things as prisoner’s rights, and their courts are swift and severe.
September 9: Today we visited the City Wall and the Terra Cotta Warriors Museum. The City Wall was a wall, yes it is 600 years old, and yes it is 40 feet high 40 feet wide and it’s 8.5 miles encircles the inner city, but it is still just a wall. What I did find interesting was that one side of the wall you could still see the crumbling remains of some of the structures that may have been there 600 for years. The main streets were fast, crowded and active while the side streets reflected the old small village atmosphere. On the other side of the City Wall was a new city with tall buildings and green parks that reflected a totally different life. We drove an hour to get to the Terra Cotta Museum part of the way was on a freeway then through a rural area of Xian. The streets were being swept by women with large brooms, merchandise was being transported in bicycle carts, and large buses were moving thousands of people many of them tourist. We moved into a rural area and saw what we discovered were groves of pomegranate trees. What was unique about these trees was that every pomegranate that I could see was individually raped in plastic on the tree. Our guide explained that this made the pomegranates ripen faster thus extending the time that the farmers could sell their product. Each side of the road was lined with red and green large umbrellas shielding the farmer and his product from the sun that never shines. Xian is a grey city; the air pollution is so bad that they never see blue sky and seldom directly see the sun. The Terra Cotta Warriors and Horses may be the most significant archeological excavations of the 20th century. Work continues at this site, which is around a half a mile east of Emperor Qin Shi Huang’s Mausoleum. Upon taking the throne at the age of 13 (in 246 BC), Qin Shi Huang had begun to work for his mausoleum. It took 11 years to finish. It is speculated that many buried treasures and sacrificial objects had accompanied the emperor in his after life. A group of peasant farmers uncovered some pottery while digging for a well nearby the royal tomb in 1974. It caught the attention of archeologists from around the world immediately. They came to Xian in droves to study and to extend the digs. They have proven that these artifacts were associated with the Qin Dynasty (211-206 BC). Life size terracotta figures of warriors and horses arranged in battle formations blow and before you as you enter the first museum which is the size of three football fields. There are two other exhibition halls displaying additional soldiers and horses and a bronze chariot with horses. It was certainly one of the highlights of the trip so far.We went to a dumpling dinner and magnificent Chinese musical and dance presentation tonight, but the evening was tainted as our third traveler dropped. Bruce passed out in the rear of the theater, he joins Bernice with severe diarrhea, and Jennifer who tripped over a pear basket in the hotel hall in Dunhuang and spent two days in the hospital after receiving twenty stitches in her leg. We don’t know how many of us will board the plane tomorrow morning for our flight to Lhasa, Tibet.
September 10, 11 & 12: Lhasa, Tibet is different, the peoples faces, the smells, the sounds, the monks, the food, the Buddhist religion, the artwork; it all comes together to construct an unforgettable memory. Everyone made the trip, but not everyone is up to the 12,000 foot experience of Lhasa, headaches and general exhaustion abound. Our hotel is in the center of old town which is a bustling market place full of venders and buyers and thousands of devout Buddhists. Most of the merchandise looks the same but different from where we have been, thus far we have not chosen to buy anything other then take a mile hike to a superstore, Wal-Mart like, and stock up on snacks, Nita found chocolate. I had my best meal of the trip last night at the Snowland Restaurant, Yak Steak in mushroom sauce with french fries and steamed veggies; the Chinese food is growing old.
Today we ascended the steps to the Potala Palace which dates back to the 7th century. I am estimating it was a 600 step climb, in this altitude it was not easy, 13 of our 18 attempted and all 13 made it to the top and back down. The Potala Palace is the centerpiece of the city and thousands of devout Buddhist climb the steps each day to make offerings and say prayers at numerous shrines. We moved through the many rooms side by side with the worshipers offering their Yuan and sharing their yak butter to keep the candles burning. This after noon we went to the Jokhang Temple in the center of the square, both structures are rooted in the Buddhist religion and the Deli Lama.
After two full days of exposure to the Buddhist religion and the people of Lhasa, I envy their devotion and their peace. I feel confident that not one of the thousands of people that I walked with in their clockwise march around Jokhang Temple cared what the stock market did today or were even aware that the US was fighting a war in Iraq or that gas was selling for $2.70 a gallon. Their only concern was that they were leading an honorable life and that they were properly preparing themselves for their next life, while honoring their elders and their ancestors.
Thus far Nita and I feel totally safe in the streets as we walk through the markets and stores. Betty and Able, who are traveling with us, are second generation Chinese who live outside of San Francisco. I asked then why there was so little violent crime in China, and they explained that the worst think that a Chinese can do is to bring shame onto his or her family, and to rob, kill, or rape is unthinkable. “If a Chinese man were to kill or rape another Chinese his parents would probably commit suicide in shame.”
This evening three couples found a neat bar on the second floor of a retail store overlooking the streets of old Lhasa, Michael and I tried the Tibetan Barley Spirits, it ranks in the top three worst drinks I have ever had, (Chinese Fire Water, Alabama Moonshine, Tibetan Barley Spirits) but I value all three memories. Our third day in Lhasa consisted of a visit to a Buddhist Monastery and more climbing and more yak butter. I have seen more Buddhist monks in these last three days then in the preceding 63 years, but I do have a better understanding of the Buddhist religion. As I moved through the monastery I stepped aside to allow an older women and monk pass before me. As the monk passed he poked me in the belly and smiled. At the time I took it as a message from God to lose some weight, but I was later told that as one reaches full enlightment is the Buddhist Religion and attains Buda status a tummy is desired if not expected. It made me feel better about myself.
We as a group have decided that although the Chinese government does not approve of the Buddhist practices here in Lhasa they recognize that this place is a big tourist draw so they are going to allow it to exist and have built a $10 billion fast train system from Beijing to make it easier for you to get here. This evening Marsha, Michael, Nita and I went back to our neighborhood bar, a third floor fire trap overlooking Jokhang Temple and the adjoining streets. Sitting next to me was a young Frenchman surfing the internet. I asked “How are you connected?” “This bar offers free wireless.” His wife was sitting next to him talking to someone in France on a headset plugged into his computer. Down below I saw a woman and child leading a burro followed by her husband pulling a dilapidated wooden cart with all their worldly position having made a six month pilgrimage to the Jokhang Temple. What a world we live in. <
September 13: This morning we boarded a one hour forty minute flight to Chengdu, a city of 11 million, known as “the Land of Abundance” for its fetal soil and abundant agricultural production. The real reason for coming to Chengdu is the Chengdu Panda Breeding Research Center.
There are only 1600 Giant Pandas in the wild; that is up from 1000 five years ago due in great part to the efforts of the Chengdu Panda Breeding Research Center. The Panda eats one type of bamboo which is being threatened by the panda, who eats 60 pounds a day, and the destruction of the habitat by the growing cities. In addition the panda are very lazy and do not appropriate well on their own so the Chengdu Panda Breeding Research Center has made efforts to make it easer for the Pandas to commingle in the wild thus reducing inbreeding within the small panda communities. There are 70 Pandas at the Research Center that are easily seen and photographed and the facility is beautifully laid out, we totally enjoyed our visit and I burnt a lot of pixels. We were able to see five baby pandas ranging in age from six months to two weeks old. Last night we went to a traditional Tea House and enjoyed a very colorful show that included Changing Faces and Spiting Fire, and Hand Shadow Show. If I could learn to do the hand shadows I could replace videos as my grandchildren’s favorite form of entertainment. The show was a variety show displaying various Chinese instruments, puppetry, and skits, while enjoying tea and peanuts. Tomorrow we will board our ship to see The Three Gorges Dam project. We will enter at Chungging, which I am told is the largest city in the world at 35 million, but it does not appear as such on any recent lists because none of the lists have been compile in the past five years. In 1994 it was listed at 9.4 million, it’s growing that fast, through migration and by expanding boarders.
September 14: The day started with a four and half hour bus ride from Chengdu to Chungging the largest industrial center in Southeastern China. We drove through miles of agricultural areas including rice patties and duck ponds for Peking Duck. The Chinese farmer does not own his land but leases it from the government for up to 99 years the lease payment is made to the government by selling part of their crops to the government at a highly discounted price. Recently many of the farmers are having to turn their land back over to the government as the cities expand and need the farm land for factories and housing. The farmers are bought out of their lease and provided with new housing, usually in a high-rise apartment complex, and offered retraining. This works out well of the young but not so well for the older farmers.On our way to Chunging we stopped for lunch in Dazu and then went to the Baoding Rock Carvings.
If your ever in the Dazu area this is a must see. On the way to the carvings we took a four lane toll road, which couldn’t be more then seven years old. On each side of the highway the rice farmers were spreading their rice harvest on the right lane for drying, so the four lanes turned into a two lane. When we neared the Carvings the road turned into a two lane concrete road climbing a hill, here again the farmers spread their rice on one of the lanes, even on the curves. No one seemed to mind and no one drove on the rice, we just squeezed by each other.
The rock carvings were started in 1130 by Buddhist monks, the carvings are intricate carvings depicting the principals and history of the Buddhist Religion. They have taken full rock walls maybe 90 feet long and 30 feet high and carved Bodhisattva, these are spirits that help the people in this life find their way into the next life, and Buda almost like a cartoon strip to tell their stories. I was amazed at the similarity of the stories and fables of the Buddhist religion and Christianity.We arrived in Chunging around seven PM, and everyone on the bus thought we were driving into 2050 in some futuristic movie. This city looks like it exploded out of the ground and was reaching for the heavens. I have never seen so many new high-rise buildings with 35 million people running in every direction. What makes it even more bazaar is that just outside the city you see thousands of little firms with rice patties, white ducks, and water buffalo on the side of the hills, then you drive through a three mile long tunnel and WHAMM there’s Chunging. It’s a hilly area so unlike Chengdu there are few bicycles and scooters for people to get around, just cars and buses thus a lot of air pollution. We boarded the President Six and will start our cruise down the Yangtze River tomorrow morning.
September 15: The President 6 is quite nice, now it’s not a Caribbean cruise ship with young Ukrainian girls polishing the brass, in fact there is no brass, but the room is adequate and the food is some of the best we have had thus far on our trip. What is fascinating is what is happening along the Yangtze River. The Chinese government is building a hydroelectric dam which is five times the size of the Hoover Dam and will be the largest hydroelectric power station in the world. The project, The Three Gorges Dam, started in 2003 and will be completed in 2009, will cost $22.5 billion, and will produce 3% of Chinas electricity needs. As a result the river behind the dam will raise sixty-five feet and will displace 1.3 million people, mostly farmers.
Today we stoped at Feng Du which is a city of eight hundred thousand people, all who have been displaced by the dam project. It’s an intire new city; across the river the government build what I will call a Buddhist Disney World to provid jobs for the Feng Du people. The city is a new city finished in 2003, our guide a young 23 year girl was delighted with the results of the displacement but admitted that her grandmother longs for her old life on the farm rather then the three bedroon two bath high-rise appartment. We also passed numerious cities along the river with new plants and new appartment buildings, and it seemed like each city had it’s own barge building company. Appariently there is more product being produced along the river then there are bardges to move the product. We saw one barge full of hudge containers all labled COSCO.Both Nita and I are enjoying the relaxed pace of the river boat trip but it will only last one more day. The senery is magnificent, it remindes me of my raft trip down the Grand Cannion, but this is green and the walls are not as high. Tonight Nita, “the blond”, was chosen out of the audience to play in an on stage version of musical chairs. Some big butt Frenchman, pushed her out of the chair and she missed going into the final three.
September 16& 17: The highlight of Sunday was the Boat Tracker Excursion. We borded a ferry and were taken up a tributarry of the Yangtze River where a group of five oarsman paddled the eighteen of us in a pee-pod boat to the origin of this particular river. The display of man strength and endurance would make any top athlete wither. These 135 lb. men pulled their makeshift oar for forty five minutes without stopping against the river current, turned the boat and rowed back with the current for twenty minutes. Until 1992 these men did this as that had for the preceding 500 years, naked. In 1992 the local government felt that the western tourist would be offended and made the men wear shorts.
The Three Gorges cruise offered spectacular scenery, relaxing tranquility, and commodore with a new group of friends. We toured the Dam Project in a heavy fog and light rain. The engineering and the scope of this project is a display of how a developing country can work together to advance the standard of living of a nation through cooperation. Over one million people lost their homes so that 1.5 billion could have a better life, the decision was made the work was done and the country moves on to its next project. After lunch we boarded a bus for a four hour ride to Wuhan which is located in the South Central part of China. The country side was full of agriculture; mostly cotton, rice and fish farms. What was missing was any form of farm machinery, all the work is done by man and beast, water buffalo. Living in Alabama I thought I had seen a lot of cotton, on our 250 mile journey today I saw more cotton then I have seen in the twenty-four years I have lived in Alabama.
September 18: As we drove through Wuhan our guide pointed out plots of land being farmed in 20 foot by 100 foot patches. “These farmers are allowed to grow their crops and sell them without paying any taxes.” Further in twoards the city she pointed out a group of single family homes. “These are farmers homes, they were given to the farmers in 1996 so that a developer could develop ther farm plots into high-rise appartments. Soon the developers will buy their homes from the farmers for 2 million Yuan so that they can develop the land into commercial property. So the farmers went from making three thousand Yuan per year to multi millioniers in twelve years. They like the new China.” We visited a regional museum in Wuhan and saw the advancements of the bronze age to include a musical presentation of the Bornze Bells.
We flew to Guilin this afternoon. Guilin is a city of 700,000 people whose main industry is tourism, the landscape is suppost to be the best in China. Tonight Nita and I went for a massage, $13.00 for an hour. The girl spent at least 10 miniutes on my head, it was great; I had the full body and Nita had the foot massauge. We think we’ll flip tomarrow night. There’s a market next to our hotel that has an open air food court serving snails, big spiders, scorpians, and snakes; we may try to catch dinner tomarrow before we get the massage, at least it won’t be rice and nooldes.
September 19: More than 200,000 residents of Shanghai, have been evacuated in preparation for Typhoon Wipha, a storm that could become a super typhoon. “The impact and damage from Wipha could be extraordinary, and gales and waves caused by it could be the strongest this year.” Winds are predicted to top 114 mph when the eye of the storm makes landfall in Shanghai early this morning. Chinese officials are doing all they can to minimize damage and loss of life, hoping not to relive the devastation of Typhoon Winnie that claimed 236 lives in 1997. We are hearing nothing about Wipha here in Guilin, all my information comes off the internet. Our itinerary calls for us to travel to Shanghai on Friday.
September 19: As Brice Cannon and Zion National Park are to the US, Guilin is to China. Millions of years ago this area was under water and the water receded and came back many times washing away the loose bottom and leaving large limestone towers and mountains creating a magnificent landscape. Guilin’s sister ciry is Orlando, Floridia and like Orlando Guilin’s number one industry is tourism. It frist came to the attintion of the western world with Richard Nixons visit in 1971 and called Guilin “The Pearl of China”, and has continuied to be a faviorate of the Carters, Clintons and Gerrge and Barbara Bush.
This morning we visited a kindergarten and interacted with four to seven year old Chinese children, all were fun loving and energetic. Our guide explained that there was no schooling in China from 1966 through 1976 during the Cultural Revolution, but education is now one of the governments major priorities making it available to all children. In 1976 there were no college graduates, today 20% of the youth graduate from college. The country’s one child policy has helped in this effort in that parents want, and are willing to sacrifice to get their “little emperor” the best of everything.Later in the day we went to Reed Flute Cave. Inside the cave is a spectacular world of various stalactites, stalagmites, stone pillars and rock formations created by carbonate deposits. The cave is illuminated by colored lighting along a 240-meter-long passage. This cave puts Mammoth and Carlsbad to shame. In ten years this city will be another Disney World type destination and Guilin will be another Orlando. Tonight we are going to Cormorant Fishing. Plans are to go onto Shanghai on Friday.
September 20: Cormorant Fishing involves a fisherman, a bamboo pole boat, and four cormorant birds. A cormorant is a big bird, it looks like a vulture with a 12 inch neck. The fishing is done at night, the boat has two kerosene lanterns on the front, the fisherman poles his boat down the river and the birds dive in, swim underwater searching for fish. The Cormorants can stay underwater for about forty seconds swimming in front of the lighted boat. If they find a fish they grab it in their beaks and surface, they then attempt to swallow their catch but because the fisherman has put a wire necklace tight around their neck there are unable to swallow the fish past the necklace. The fisherman calls the bird back to the boat and squeezes the fish up the birds neck out its mouth and into his catch basket. This goes on all night, we cruised alongside for forty-five minutes in a boat taking pictures and cheering the cormorants and the fisherman on. After the fishing we toured the city and the city lights. Most of these people work during the day and have no air-conditioning at home so they come downtown, the city looked like the Galleria the day after Thanksgiving, the lighting is dramatic to accent the Chinese architecture and the natural beauty of the limestone towers within the city. This morning we curuise down the Li River for five hours to Yangshou, a small villige of twenty thousand.September 20: Today we travled four hours down the Li River to Yangshuo, a village of 20,000. Our boat was one of one hundred that made the daily trip through the picturest river bason. Betty, your right they do wash the dishes in the river water, they also cook the rice in the river water but the snake wine takes care of all that. From the river we got a view into life in rural China. Each boat carried about 70 passengers thus each day Yangshuo grows by 30% with the influx of new toursists. The streets are full of shops, hotels, and venders while surrounded by the green limestone towers.
This afternoon we were picked up by a eight pasenger golf cart and taken into the rural country side. As the road turned from asfault to dirt it was like passing into the seventeenth century. We went into a village of about eighty people who lived off the land just as they had four hundred years ago, with water buffalo, rice patties, back breaking labor, community toilets, cooking over fire and dirt; take away limmited electricity, the one dish TV and it’s 1658 in China. Each farmer workes about one fifth of an acre, a extended family might controle one acre of land and produce seven thousand pounds of rice a year. They sell their rice for 1.25 Yuan per pound. The fudel system is gone and the farmers have their own leased land, but the changing world is coming on fast. Currently 80% of all Chinese live off the land, the governments goal is to reduce that to 50% by 2020. Children are being educated, factorys are being built and population growth is being brought under control.
After dinner we went down the city main street to do some sight seeing and shopping with Michael and Marcia. I quickly discovered that I could get their price divide it by four, counter their price at one forth and be prepaired to walk out holding at that price. I never got out the door without making a purchase. We had a great time and made some good purchases.
September 21: Today was a travle day, two hour bus ride back to Guilin, a two hour flight to Shanghai, and a two hour bus ride to Suzhou. This was our first day of rain, tomarrow we go to the gardens, the silk factory and a boat trip.
September 22: Suzhou is a city of seven million people known as the Venice of China, maybe someday but not really. The city is known for its gardens and old luxury homes, we toured one of those homes today and viewed the gardens. Later in the day we went to a silk factory and learned how silk in made from the silk worm, to the mulberry tree, to the mill, to cloth. It was quite interesting and educational, of course this was all followed by a huge gift shop selling everything silk. We finished the afternoon with a boat ride through the city’s canels taking us into old town. Nita and I and Michael and Marcia then caught a cab and went to the city center and commingled with the locals out for a day of shopping. Four two hours we only saw two other Caucasians in the streets. For those two hours we were the attraction. Mothers brought their children to us to practice their english, people wanted to shake our hands to touch us, a boy put on a demonstration of his inline skating skills to entertain us. We went into stores that were not normally visited by foreigners and communicated our needs with the aid of sign language and the few words of Chinese that we could speak. Back at our hotel we found a Chinese wedding reception going on, our guide Rosie in Urumqi had educated us on the courting and wedding procedures of the Chinese so it was neat to see the customs unfold.Tomorrow morning we leave for two days in Shanghai.

September 23 & 24: Shanghai originally was a sleepy fishing village that sat in the shadows of Suzhou on the banks of the Huangpu and Yangtze Rivers and today just might be the most spectacular city in the world while at the same time a city of enormous contrasts. Shanghai has a population of over 17 million, 3.8 million of which are floating on the rivers. The Bund on the west bank has the appearances of a European capital with large stone buildings facing the river. Starting in the 1930’s the city grew as a major port and investment center controlled by European and American capitalists. As Shanghai grew the city attracted Chinese farmers looking for work and a better life which they found in the factories, and docks. The westerners, having built “their city”, feared this huge influx of Chinese into “their city” would jeopardize the quality of life that they had built for themselves so they created a system that divided the city into zones that would result in segregated and separate societies, these concessions continue into present Shanghai as a city of multiple architectural styles.
In 1949 the Communist, which controlled the Peoples Liberation Army under Mau Zedong, took control of the country and for the next forty years Shanghai’s commercial power vanished. The Bund fell in disrepair. Most of the foreign companies located in Shanghai moved their offices to Hong Kong. Much of China’s history in the form of antiquities left with the foreigners. Under Mau the power of China was redistributed and Shanghai took on the look of most Communist cities. Then in 1992 the government authorized the redevelopment of Shanghai by lowering taxes and encouraging investment which resulted in the Shanghai of today which grows at a rate of 9% to 15% each year. The new foreign investment resulted in the building a new district, Pudong on the east side of the river, consisting of tall glass office buildings huge hotels, shopping malls and wide streets. In the daylight Shanghai is amazing; Nanjaing Street has every kind of store that you can imagine, from high fashion to McDonalds and KFC. When you look closer you find that one block behind the high fashion stores are thousands of Chinese living just as they did one hundred years ago. Ten years from now most of that will all be gone.
The only way to really appreciate the size and scope of Shanghai and Pudong is at night, the lights on the skyscrapers and the Bund look like something created for a movie set. We had dinner with Michael and Marcia and Jerry and Jennifer on the 56th floor of the Grand Hyatt in Pudong, across the river from Shanghai. We all had Kobe steak, imagine that, and wine and celebrated a wonderful month of travel and new friends. It is fitting that our journey ended in Shanghai for as the Buddhist temples, rice patties, and mud houses are a reminder of the past Shanghai stands as a window through which you can see China’s future.
China is a lot of things; 1.5 billion people, a country on a mission, a diverse population, beautiful landscape, air pollution, sanitation problems, friendly hard working people, people working in harmony for the betterment of all, and an economic force of which the world has never seen before. I went to China believing that is was a third world country, a developing nation. I returned believing that China will see its 2008 Olympic slogan, “One World One Dream”, come to fruition.
September 15:We made it home Tuesday evening at 10:20 pm. Wednesday night we went out to dinner with Ron and Avie and Albert and Sue, we went Chinese. Nita and I showed off our newly acquired chopstick skills.
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November 13, 2007
Italy October 2007
Our trip to Italy resulted from an invitation from Nita’s cousin Bill to join him and others in Florence for up to two weeks. The first week we were joined by Donn and Linda, Donn’s another cousin, and Joyce a Family friend of Bills. The second week we were joined by Claudio, Sharon, Eddie, and Mare, all long time friends of Bills. Bill found our apartment, in the heart of Florence, on the Internet. (Four bedrooms, three baths, a lift, and a rooftop patio). This was the first time that we had committed to this long of a trip with other people, I think all involved were apprehensive. Nita and I decided we also wanted to see the Lake Como area, thus we flew in and out of Milan.
October 26, 2007
We arrived at our hotel, the Sheraton Diani Majestic, in Milan. It is an older building as is most of Milan on a picturest square. After checking in Nita, and I set out to see the city in a light rain. We walked down Corso Buenos Aires towards the center of the city. Milan is not what I had expected being one of the largest cities, with a municipality population of 7.4 million, in Italy and the commercial center of the country. I expected to see skyscrapers and busy streets. Instead I found beautiful old buildings none over eight floors tall, the streets are not so crowded that j-walking is a problem. Milan has a terrific public transit system including a subway, electric trolleys and a bus system. Milan’s history is complicated in that it has been to position of the Roman Empire, the Spanish, the French, and the Austrians before it became a part of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861. Milan is a shopper’s paradise; the streets are lined with beautiful stores and shops displaying the highest fashion in their windows. I expected that from the Prada, and Gucci, but their high class influence has extended into the everyday clothing stores as well. That being said with the cost of the eruo at $1.46 it's tough to buy anything but food in Europe today. As we reached the center of the city my eye caught the top of the Duomo di Milano, one of the world’s largest churches, being second in size within Italy only to Saint Peters Basilica in Rome, and the second largest Gothis Cathedral in the world, after the Cathedral of Seville. It’s construction started in the 1400’s and continues today, having never reached completion. It is huge, it is ornate, and it is something to see. In 1805 Napoleon ordered the Façade to be finished so that he could be crowned the King of Italy inside the Duomo seven years later. You can find his stature atop of one of the spires. Adjacent to The Duomo is the Galleria Vittorio Enanuels in the Plazza Duoma, the worlds oldest shopping mall. It was completed in 1877 the street below is covered with a steel and glass arched root four stores above. We made a special trip to Santa Maria Delle Grazie, a famous church in Milan and the home of the mural of the Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci. Having read the Da Vinco Code Nita and I wanted to see for ourselves who was sitting next to Jesus. The world will have to wait; the workers at the museum were on strike and thus the building was closed. “How do things like this happen?” After five hours of walking, and a glass of wine, Nita and I decided it was time to learn the subway system. We found ourselves back in our room at six, decided not to go out for dinner and went to bed exhausted. It’s now 1:50 in the morning and I am wide awake (6:50 PM Birmingham time). I’ll go to bed and try to fall asleep, we’re heading for Florence tomorrow afternoon after some photo opportunities here in Milan; the sun is supposed to come out.
October 27, 2007
I was wrong, there are a few skyscrapers in Milan, in what I would call the mid-town area. We caught the subway to the Duoma area this morning and I was able to get some good pictures as the sun came out and the sky turned blue, it’s a beautiful day in Milan. (I’ll be posting my pictures on my Google Picasa sight if you are interested kjohng@gmail.com/picasa) We strolled through the Galleria Vittorio Enanuels and admired the high fashion. I found a painting by a local artist that I would like to purchase but with the 40% add-on for the devalued dollar it is going to take some further consideration. We will be back in Milan at the end of our journey so maybe maybe-not. We are now on the train traveling from Milan to Florence, yes we mastered the train system as well as the subway and trolley. Nita and I are becoming proud world travelers even though we only speak English. We have found true what we were told in China, “Find a young person, they’ll speak English.” After a two and a half hour train ride we were in Florence; we pulled our rolling suitcases through the web of stone covered streets to find or apartment two blocks off the Arno River amongst an assortment of fine retail shops. Number 17 Via DellaVignia Nuova greeted us with two 12 foot by 3 foot heavy wood locked doors, a buzz on button SCS and an electronic lock was released, and we pulled out suitcases into a dimly lit entry to a fine restaurant that would not open for another four hours. At the end of the entry we found a steel gate with another electronic lock that gaining us entry to a staircase leading to a group of ten apartments in our 400 year old home for the next two weeks. Our’s sits on the third floor; the home of four centuries “Unclaimed Italian Art.” Rather than attempt to describe this collection of marble, canvas and oil, porcelain and bronze, I will let my pictures fill your mind with the same clutter that we will be living with along with Nita’s cousins Donn and his wife Linda, and Bill and a family friend Joyce. This adventure was organized by Bill and if we all still like each other at the end may become an annual gathering that might draw more of the cousins. We left the apartment at six and walked along the river, turned on Vai del Proconsolo and found a restaurant on Plazza Della Signoria . Dinner was pizza, salad, red wine, spirited conversation, and laughs. We then explored the streets until we found ourselves on the Plazza della Repubblica. We noticed a gathering of photographers, film crews and bystanders in the center of the Plazza and joined them to see what was going on or who was commanding all the attention. As we arrived three sets of headlights drove onto the Plazza came to a stop in front of the cameras. Three new Farrari's rested then revved their engines to a guttural grawl to the delight of the onlookers. We never did determine what brought them to the Plazza, but it was a nice welcome to Florence for two car lovers. (called Gear Heads in some circles)
October 28
My day started at six AM with a two mile run along the Arno River; I was able to run further then ever before, it must be the Italian air. With no food in the apartment our first order of business this morning was to visit a local supermarket. This is always interesting in a foreign country not being able to read the labels, the food is recognizable but the labels are not clear. We were able to find the wine, some cheese, and salami so our evening hors d’ oeuvres on the roof was a big hit. That’s right we have a rooftop patio, but what would you expect in such a first class establishment. (The Home of Unclaimed Italian Art.) Climbing to the rooftop patio requires us to pass through what I have chosen to call “Mary’s Room” where Mary guards a collection of miniature marionette stages; just another unexpected feature of our very unusual apartment. I have also included a photo of the picture that greets us as we enter our front door. Donn, Linda, Nita and I took a long walk across Florence to find the only Jewish Synagogue in Florence, built in 1882, which was an impressive building. There are only 200 Jewish families in a city of 965,000. We also found Enoteca Pinchiorri the only Michelin rated restaurant in Italy, and plays a role in my novel, The Stock Lord. I looked over the menu but not being open Sunday night and the fact that it appeared that one could not get out for less then $200 per head, not including wine, we were not able to fit it into our busy schedule.
October 29
Florence is only partially open today; many of the museums and such are closed on Monday. We headed out to the train station to get information for our Wednesday excursions. As we passed a governmental building that is being renovated to house a new museum Bill pointed out a series of sculpted medallions on the side of the building Dalanno dated 1451. We then stopped at Santa Maria Novella Monastery that dated back to 1381 and distinguished itself for its bottling and selling of rose water as a disinfectant during the period of plague (Black Death). The friars upgraded their efforts starting in 1612 to where their efforts offer some computation to the Body Shop today. We then went to the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore the cathedral church (Duomo) of Florence, Italy. The basilica is notable for its dome designed by Filippo Brunelleschi its exterior facing of polychrome marble panels in various shades of green and pink bordered by white. Although beautiful it does not hold a candle to the Duoma of Milano, if you can only see one choose Milan. We then meandered back to the Piazza della an L-shaped square in front of the Palazzo Vecchio. The square is also shared with the Loggia della Signoria, the Uffizi Gallery, the Palace of the Tribunale della Mercanzia (1359, and the Uguccioni Palace (16th c.) (with a facade probably by Raphael). Located in front of the Palazzo Vecchio is the Palace of the Assicurazioni Generali (1871, built in Renaissance style). The various eye-catching statues in this square include: At the entrance of the Palazzo Vecchio, a copy of David. The “bronze equestrian statue of Cosimo I” by Giambologna (1594) The Fountain of Neptune by Bartolomeo Ammannati (1575) “The Lion”, referred to as “il Marzocco” with a copy of the “Florentine Lily”, originally made by Donatello “Judith and Holofernes”, by Donatello “Hercules and Cacus”, by Bandinelli (1533).
October 30
Today was a soft day, a light rain 60 to 70 degrees, perfect weather for museum hopping. Our first stop was the Uffizzi to make reservations for Friday morning. Reservations are the way to go because you avoid the ques of all those that don’t know about reservations. While we were there we made and afternoon reservation for the Accadamia, the home of David by Michale Angalio. Our first stop was The Bargello, which in the past served as the home of the Justice of Pease of the city. The requirements of the Justice of Pease was that you be Catholic and a non resident to Florence. Apparently, they felt that justice could not be delivered by a fellow resident. The current museum houses a variety of sculpture, ceramics (Della Robbia), weaponry, and church relics, as well as treasures of the Medici family. We then, with rain coats and poncho, walked to the Accedmdia Gallery to view Michelangelo’s David, which has been displayed here since 1873; moved from the Plazza della Signoria in an effort assure it’s preservation. (This is the David that slayed Golith with the sling.) There is a copy of David in Plazza della Signoria today. The Accedima also displays three other worked by Michelangelo as well as paintings by other residence artists. The day ended with a fabulous meal at Trattoria La Sostanza an off the beaten path family restaurant that served the best food that we have eaten thus far. We attempted to make reservations later in the week but found they were closed Thursday through Monday for All Saints Day.
October 31
Today Donn, Linda, and Joyce took the train to Venice for a day trip, and Nita and I rented a car for an outing through Chianti Country south of Florence. The difficult part of our trip was getting in and out of Florence. The traffic is hectic and the drivers are aggressive and unforgiving. Within three minutes of pulling the car out of the garage I found myself going the wrong way down a one-way street. The bus driver and his passengers that were trapped behind me as I did a 15 point turn-around were very unforgiving. It may have had something to do with my inability to figure how to get my little Fiat into reverse. Ten minutes later I missed a turn and incurred a twenty minute penalty as a result of the route required to double back and get on the right road. Once we got on the right road with the assistance of a kind Policia the scenery was beautiful, it is fall in Chianti Country and yellows, oranges, and reds against a blue sky were second to none that I have seen. First we drove to the top of the mountain at Lamole, arriving as the church bell rang to call the farmers in from their fields at noon. Then we drove back into Greve and had lunch, I had one of the specialties wild boar, and purchased wine in their wine museum. We then went further south to Castellina, a Milldle Aged city that dates back to the 11th century.
Strolling the narrow streets we were both taken with the cleanleness and crispness of the city, here also their main products are wine and olive oil, I bought more wine, passed on the oil. Like many rural cities its population is rapidly declining as the younger generation gets pulled from the farms.
Chianti is the wine produced in the Florence area. It dates back to the 1700’s and is always made from the sangiovese grape, it had allowed for the blending of the malvaisa grape in the past but this is no longer done. There are seven Chianti regions surrounding the Florence area, we traveled in the Classico Region which is the original Chianti region. The other six were added in 1967 so as to assist other areas in the marketing of their wine. Many of us remember Chianti coming in a squat bottle wrapped in a straw fiasco (flask), only a few wineries use this any more.
Donn, Linda, and Joyce enjoyed their trip to Venice. They took in all the sights including the Rialto Bridge, Saint Marks Square, (smaller then imagined), The Doge’s Palace (no furnishings but the walls and detail work beautiful), Basilica dell San Marco Salute, and a water bus ride (vaporetti) on the Grand Canal.
Their enjoyment deflated as they attempted to make their way back to Florence as they were caught up in a delayed train schedule, full trains and rowdy college students thus did not make it back to the apartment until 1:45 PM.
November 1
The day started at 10:00 AM on the south side of the river, that meant climbing and the day offered strong winds and cool weather to increase the new challenge. We were off to see San Miniato, one of the early Christian Churches. Legend has it that an Armenian marter was condemned by the Emperor and had him beheaded in the Ampatheater, his body picked up the head and ascended the hill, where he dropped the head the San Miniato Church was built in 1013. The inside of the church was a photographers paradise with Frescos, sculptures and a tranquil atmosphere. The church sits on the highest point of Frloence so it offers a good view of the old city. This is a sculpture that I found in the back of the church. The sun was coming in through a small window that caused the dramatic shadow on the wall, as well as the blue reflection on the floor.
Nita tried a thick chocolate in a cup and has found a new daily treat adding it to her gelato addiction. Just below the church is Piazzale Michelangelo which offers the best views of Florence. Our next stop was the Pitty Palace built for the Pitty family, who were rivals of the Mediccis. Years later it became the treasure house of the Medici family’s art collection. It offers worked by Raphael, Filippo, Lippi, Tintoretto, Veronese and Rubens. The restored apartments gave us some idea of the lie style of the wealthy, but it lacked furniture. Nita and I felt that The Biltmore and Varsailles had a better presentation of life of the wealthy. The Boboli Gardens, the backyard of the Pitti Plaace, are an example of Renaissance landscaping including pools, fountains and a stadium which could seat up to five hundred. We then attempted to see two more churches both were closed or all tickets had been sold so we headed back to the apartment for antipasto, cheese, sliced apples, crackers and Chaianti, on our rooftop patio. (Donn told me to stop calling our snacks hors d’ oeuvres and call them antipasto.) The sunset was magnificent providing a closing memory of our week in Florence that none of us will forget. Dinner this evening was at Il Latini, what appeared to be a small side street establishment with seating for no more then fifty. When we arrived there were over 200 people waiting outside for the doors all claiming to have reservations. As it turned out they all did have reservations and we all did get seated. It was a fixed menu of six courses with a main course that offered a heaping tray containing steak, pork chops, lamb, rabbit, chicken, and wild boar, all tender and well seasoned. The Chianti and food kept coming; the meal ended with cantuccie vin santo followed by a glass of moscato. We all left full, happy and arguing about what had been out best meal of the week; Il Latini was first or second on everyone’s list.
November 2
Today we were up early and had a stand-up coffee; it’s about half the price if you don’t sit at a table. Nita and Joyce had the Chocolate, a heavy cup of melted chocolate; a bit to rich for me. We then went to the Uffizi Museum, the top museum of the city. I didn’t get into much of the art, a bit too old for me, although good painting, I like the newer stuff. I also found the museum to be poorly lit making it difficult to see many of the paintings because of the suns reflection coming through the windows. This is All Saints weekend and the streets are shoulder to shoulder, thus we have curtailed our sights visits for today.
November 3
Today Don and Linda and Joyce left and Claudio and Sharon, his brother Eddie and Bill’s friend Mare arrived. Nita and I went to the Basilica of Santa Croce the largest Franciscan Church in the world started in 1294 completed in 1857. It is a shrine of 14th century frescoes and the burial place of Michelangelo, Galileo, Machiavelli, Gentile, Rossini and Dante. As you walk through the church you see that the floor is paved with worn tombstones. It seems that everyone wanted to be buried with the prior mentioned celebrities. So the wealthy paid to be buried in the church and thus the tombstone floor. Michelangelo, the most famous resident, died in Rome in 1564; the Pope wanted him buried in Rome but a group of Florentines stole his body and brought it back to Florence to be buried in this church. By the looks of the floor of the church it was a good investment to steal Michel. The balance of our day was spent walking, looking, eating, drinking and walking and eating.
November 4, 2007
Florence is totally different early in the morning, the streets are empty except for the men and women sweeping the prior days trash into the streets two be swallowed up by the truck vacuum and washer. There is an occasional Policia watching over as the Restaurantia owners actively fill their showcases with pastries and ready their sidewalk tables. I am able to run in the streets which are smoother then the sidewalks as the stone buildings on either side echo back my slapping feet on the pavement. Each day I choose a different route so as to better familiarize myself with the layout of the city.
Back at the apartment I searched the football scores, and yes Ron I did see that LSU pulled another one out in the fourth quarter, I’m sorry it had to be against Alabama. Today being Sunday, Claudio, Sharon, Eddie and Mare went to the Duomo for 10:30 mass, while Nita and I searched for an art studio where we purchased a painting ten years ago on our last visit to Florence. This was after Nita had her morning Chocolate. (Joe speak to the Manager at Bruno’s about adding Chocolate to their morning enticements.) We then met up with the faithful and toured the Baptismal in front of the Duomo. We then went to the Medici Chapel which is a mausoleum for the Medici family dating back to the 1600’s. The Medici Family was the most powerful family in Florence from the 13th through the 17th centuries; they produced three Popes and led the birth of the Italian Renaissance. In addition they are accredited as the facilitators of the art and architectural prominence that Florence enjoyed while they had control of Florence. From the outside of the chapel you get the feeling that this structure was a mistake, then as you enter you find a display of replica, ornate gold and silver statuary containing small bones of saints. Upstairs is s tomb fit for a king, many kings, the Medici’s. Adjacent is a separate chapel designed by Michelangelo, I guess to hold funeral services. The marble statues in here are some of Mike’s best work; he even left drawings on the walls for the contractors to follow as to how he wanted the chapel built. I’ll bet less then 10% of the tourists that visit the Academia to see David see this place, it’s a must see.
November 5
Today was a day out of Florence, Nita and I caught a train to Montecantini, while the rest of the group caught a bus to Siena. Montecantini is thirty kilometers north of Florence, known for it’s mineral waters and associated treatments. It is the best spa area in Italy. We went in hopes of a massage and other spa treatments such a mud bath or a facial. We arrived at 9:00 AM to an open green city with new buildings but in keeping with Italian architecture, with an emphasis on Roman influence. We inquired at the Excelsior to discover that they had only one body massage available for the day at a price of 110 Euro ($160 US). Thirty days ago I had a full body massage that lasted for sixty minutes for $13 in China, so I wasn’t too upset that they were not able to fit us in today. Rejected but pleased we walked the open parks and enjoyed the beauty of the city and it’s architecture. Finished with Montecantini we caught a bus and headed for Lucca. Lucca is a walled city northwest of Florence, and is the largest Italian city that still has it’s medieval city walls fully intact. As we walked through the city we saw evidence of its existence as far back as the forth century. Unlike Florence the narrow streets are traveled mostly by locals on bicycles and pedestrians moving within the city. We stopped in a small restaurant adjacent to a plaza and were soon found ourselves next to a group of twenty men from the city holding a luncheon meeting about the city and its needs. Communication was a greater challenge here but we kept it simple and had a nice lunch. We finished our walk of the city viewing the Anfitheatero and several old churches in need of restoration (they obviously do not have the funds available in Florence) and caught a train back to Florence. This evening we revisited a restaurant that we had eaten at last week, La Spada, and I had Osso Buco which was excellent. Before going into the restaurant we met a young couple who were in Florence for their honeymoon; Bill ordered them a bottle of wine from our table and we all toasted Nita and my forty-first anniversary. It was a good day in Italy.
November 6, 2007
Today is a do little day cold and overcast, we are leaving tomorrow for Como and have seen everything that we wanted to see in Florence. Nita and I both like the idea of coming to a city like this and spending a week to really get to know the city, we’ll probably try to do something like this again next year. We found an English Used Book Store so Nita went and traded in some used books for some new used books. While she was doing that I went out to the square in front of the Duomo and watched the cat and mouse game that the illegal vendors play with the police. The vendors have large white sheets that they display their knock off merchandise on along the side of the street. When a police car approached the word was passed and they grab four corners of their sheets, gathering up all their merchandise and hightailed it into an alley. Once the police car turned the corner they were back on the street opening up shop. Well today must be a slow day for crime in Florence because the police would go and show back up every five minutes, it started to look like a movie loop replaying the same scene over and over. Finally the police just parked in front of the Duomo and stood outside the car. Just for kicks I walked around to the side of the church and there were the vendors setting up no more then thirty yard from the police but out of sight. These vendors are for the most part from Africa, a lot of the waiters and waitresses are from Eastern Europe. Our waitress this afternoon was Poland, she had been here for two years, couldn't’t have been over twenty three, and spoke Italian, English, Polish, and Spanish. The Italian newspapers address an immigration problem and a strong movement to run them out of the country, sounds very familiar. This evening we ate at Trattoria Sostanza which serves authentic Italian food located around the corner from the Grand Hotel. The food is amazing! Nita and I both had the pollo al burro and then we walked across the pontevecchio to burn it off avoiding the temptation to have our last gelato in Florence.
November 7
This morning we caught the 9:14 train to Milan where we will change trains and go on to Como. Our ten days in Florence were delightful, we both feel that we know Florence and it is a wonderful city to know. Our host, Bill was delightful, always going the extra mile to see to it that everyone was enjoying themselves. Our memories will be highlighted by the people as well as the places; evenings on the roof, the view of the city from Piazzale Michelangelo, the delicious Italian food, the magnificent art, and the meandering through the web of city streets and plazas. Our train arrived in Milan ten minutes late and what was suppose to be a twenty minute connection turned into a ten minute connection. By the time we got off the train we had five minutes to find our train and board. I had asked Nita to look on our ticket and tell me what compartment we were in on the next train and she told me 314. I thought this strange because it had always been under 20 on the other trains that we had boarded. We each had a roller bag and a backpack and were headed for the terminal when I looked at the train on the adjoining track and saw compartment 312, we stopped and I stuck my head into the door and asked the conductor, “Is this train going to Como?” He responded with a “Si”, we ran back two cars and boarded with 45 seconds to spare. “Life is good in Italy.” Como is to Italy as Petoskey, Michigan is to the U.S. It is a beautiful old lake town with good weather and magnificent scenery. We didn’t do much more then get settled into our hotel, the Albergo Treminus, and old hotel on the lake that had just expanded and we ended up with an ultra modern room (#420) with a lake view; life is good in Italy. About five o’clock, after exploring the town, we stumbled into a McDonald's, (OK we’re weaker then you thought) and had a Coke and fries. About 7:45 we found what appeared from the outside menu to be a good Italian restaurant that featured fish. I had the best sea bass, served whole and filleted at the table, what a show. It had been baked in olive oil, butter and parsley, and then served with diced potatoes, black olives and tomatoes; I accompanied it with a bottle of Orvieto Blanc…FANTASTIC. Nita had baked prawns in olive oil and butter which she enjoyed. We headed back to the hotel anticipating a day on the lake.
November 8
This morning we rode the cable train up the side of the mountain to Brunate, a small city that looks over Como. Most of the view was blocked by the homes built on the side of the slope, but what we could see was spectacular. At 12:45 we boarded a hydrofoil for a boat ride up the lake. The trees have turned yellow, red and orange so the fall colors were a marvelous accent to the pastel houses and the blue sky. Lake Como is not like anything that I have ever seen. The shore line is dotted with little villages each presenting their town halls and churches to the passing boater with pride. They looked like Christmas villages in a department store display. We got off in Varenna hoping to tour a Villa that I found on the internet, but like most else in this area it had closed down for the winter as of November first. We did have a good lunch, spaghetti with clams, a tomato salad (their tomatoes are better then US tomatoes) and wine. Then we walked back to the boat dock along the shore line and caught a boat to Bellagio. I will guarantee there was more going on at the Las Vegas Bellagio then at the one in Italy. Most of the hotels and shops were closed, but the day was beautiful the air was clean so we took a romantic walk down the promenade and recalled that forty-one years ago we were honeymooning in Nassau. It’s now 7:30 in the evening and Nita just asked me what we were going to do about dinner. We went to Rieo a trendy Pizzaria with a speed boat theme. Pizza here is always thin crust, odd shaped because it’s hand made and seldom with more then two toppings. Tonight’s was good but not great.
November 9
Today we discovered that most Italian cities have more then one rail station. In Como we found a second station much closer to our hotel so we went there rather then walk up the hill to the one that we came in through. It was then that we discovered that Milan has three rail stations and we could not get to the one close to our hotel without making a transfer. That was OK until we discovered that the rail station close to our hotel was not the one that we had to be at the next morning at six-thirty to catch a bus to the airport. The day was a day of learning relative to the particulars about getting around Milan. We left our baggage at our hotel and caught the #3 trolley downtown to make our city bus tour at 2:30, half way through our journey the trolley driver stopped and threw everyone off, explaining that he “was not going to Milano Centero, so get off”. Everyone was confused but we all did as he demanded. A young Italian girl offered to take Nita and I to another trolley line that would go to Milano Centero, so we followed her through the streets for fifteen minutes. At one point I feared that she could be taking us to be shanghaied, but this wasn’t China this was Italy. She did drop us at a pick-up point and told us to catch trolley # 11. Eight minutes later trolley #11 showed up and we got on only to be put off after a five minute ride. “I am not going to Milano Centreo, get off.” Everyone got off. Luckily I recognized the Palace three blocks away and with the aid of my map we found our way to the tour office. I told the tour people what had happened and she explained that the city employees had called a strike and we were luck that we had made it as far as we had. It seems the new mayor wants to change the city employees retirement age from 58 to 65 to align with all other members of the European alliance. The tour took us back to many of the sights that we had seen on our own two weeks earlier, but did answerer some questions, give us new information and get us into The Last Supper. First I learned that Bartholomew, one of the twelve Apostles, was skinned by people who didn’t like his preaching Christianity then crucified upside down, thus he is the patron saint of tanners. This explained Marco d’Agrate’s statue (1562) of Bartholomew in the Duomo di Milano. (I have several on my photo site) Second there is a Synagogue in the Galleria Vittorio Enanuels, thus the Medora on the windows above the McDonald's. Third John sitting on Jesus’ right in Leonardo’s painting of The Last Supper was the youngest and meekest of the Apostles. This is why Leonardo painted him with female features causing some to believe it was Mary Magdalen. (ya, right. Leo was a real trickster.)
November 10
We made it to the Milan airport and are waiting for our 10:40 direct flight to Atlanta. Nita and I are both ready to come home. The flight was easy, we watched three movies, made it through customs, are in the Delta Crown Room having a drink while watching the Georgia/ Auburn game and waiting for a seven o’clock flight to Birmingham. This is where having the AXP Platinum card pays off. We made it home at 7:00 PM Birmingham time, thus starting from Nita getting up at 4:00 AM in Milan we had a twenty hour travel day. It’s good to be home.
November 11
We were up at 7:00AM and met Avie, Rebbecca, Jeffery, Phil, Bert, and Tommy at the Crestline Bagel Shop for coffee, then at 2:30 we took the granddaughters, Haileigh and Emma to a family track meet at Sanford University. Haileigh, Emma and I each ran the 50 meters and 100 meters, a relay and the girls participated in the long jump. The girls both won trophy’s, Emma’s first ever, and we had a great first day back in Birmingham. It was early to bed, I was confident that the Colts would pull out a win, but it was not to be.
If you would like to see more of my Italy pictures they can be viewed at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/kjohng/Italy2007