China, June 2013

Dear friends,  we are just back from 3 weeks in China (one week of teaching at Northeast Normal Univ in Manchuria; and 2 weeks with JGN traveling around).  I had difficulty accessing the blog in China so when we returned I posted everything at once.  If you want to read it in chronological order from the beginning of the trip, read from bottom of the long June 29 post.

MN and JGN walking the Great Wall

We love Shanghai!

We got to Shanghai a day late because we were fogged in at Yichang, the terminus of the river cruise, and could not fly out as scheduled.  Here it must be said that the airport treated the people well--they gave out hot dinner boxes and then finally, when the flight was canceled, put everyone up in a hotel. Much better than the treatment you get in the US! Yichang is a small city (1.5 million, tiny by China standards) with little besides the dam and some chemical and fertilizer factories.  The hotel where they put us overnight, Hongqiao (red bridge), English name "Holiday Inn" (not a real one) was clean enough.  Guest room had book with house rules, including one that said no drunkenness, fighting, gambling or whoring -- existence of said rule suggesting that all these activities are common.

Anyway we still had three days in Shanghai.   SH is like NYC --on steroids.  We had a great time, finding little restaurants in the side streets off Nanjing Rd. East, walking the Bund, etc. We were especially charmed by the people who come out at night to dance and sing in the Nanjing Rd. pedestrian mall.  It's like Times Square but it is also a public space for local  people. We saw line dancing, a big sing-along, and ballroom dancing.  We joined in the line dancing for a bit, but could not follow.

view from hotel room

Pudong, China's shrine to capitalism.

 Went to Xiao Yang's on Huanghe Rd. (off Nanjing Rd. W, just north of People's Square) for the famous shengjianbao -- pork dumplings steamed then bottom fried.  Pretty good, though I have to say they were not as good as the ones at the No. 7 stand on Roosevelt Rd. in Taipei.

Shanghai museum:  square= earth, round=heavens

from 65th floor bar of our hotel

Nanjing Rd East at night

Line dancing on Nanjing Rd East, next to our hotel

The sing-along had about 50-60 people; plus another 20-30 onlookers.  The words were on a big poster board, and there were musicians and an awesome conductor.

We went to Yuyuan in the rain; had drinks at the Long Bar in the Waldorf, formally the Shanghai Club (which was cool though I have mixed feelings about the whole colonial club thing),  and dinner  at Mercato, the new Jean-Georges restaurant at Three on the Bund. Excellent pizza (sausage, kale and pecorino), grilled octopus, and lobster ravioli. Had a great view of the Bund and the party cruise boats on the Huangpu.

Yuyuan

Long Bar

View the Huangpu from Mercato

On our last day, a visit to Din Tai Fung for xiaolungbao, which has several branches in SH.  In fact DTF has grown into an empire, with over 20 branches in Taiwan, HK, China, Singapore, Seoul. (also LA and Seattle--when is NYC going to get one??)  We went to the one in Xintiandi and didn't even have to wait for a table.  Pork and pork/crab xiaolungbao--heavenly.

Yangtze River

We leave Chongqing on Friday night for a three-day cruise down the Yangtze River (in China called 長 江－changjiang, or the long river).  The famous Three Gorges have been filled in by the construction of the dam, so the water is 60 meters higher and the gorges are not as spectacular but they still impress.  Of course everywhere we got the party line about the dam being an unmitigated good, saving lives (flood control), producing hydro-electric power (the generators there supply power for a 1,000 km diameter, including Beijing and Shanghai), and enabling a greater volume of river traffic. But creating the reservoir (raising the river) displaced 1.3 million farmers, who were located to new villages higher up on the mountain or to Chongqing. Raising the river permanently destroyed valuable agricultural lands, has provoked landslides (we saw concrete reinforcements on the banks everywhere), and has endangered various species of fish and wildlife. See link at left for more on Three Gorges dam controversy.

Chongqing at night, viewed from our ship. We love sailboats!

Entering the Qutong Gorge

"Ghost City" - shore excursion. 300+ steps up in heat for gods that determine who goes to hell.

Goddess Mountain in Wu Gorge

 To see the goddess, click on the photo to enlarge. Look carefully for the tiny figure to the right of the double peaks.

visit to the ship's bridge (just have to ask!)

When we got to the third gorge, the Xiling, we transferred to a ferry and then to wooden boats to travel up the Daning River, a tributary, into the beautiful, narrow Butterfly Gorge.  The people in this area are Tujia （土家）an ethnic minority (and we later saw some awesomely scary Tujia opera masks at the Shanghai Museum).  The boatmen work really hard, in a long tradition of arduous physical labor and including "tracking"--walking in the river and along the rocky banks and pulling boats by long ropes in strong currents.)  They now mostly work for the tourist industry and we were told that they work shifts of 4 or 5 hours a day, which made us feel slightly less guilty.  We saw wild monkeys and mountain goats; and the "hanging coffins" in the cliffs, a "burial" practice hundreds of years old (some of these were lost when the river was filled--click on photo to enlarge to see coffin in the crevice)

Hanging coffin

Boatmen on trip up Butterfly Gorge

That night we went through the ship locks, at 1 am (took two hours).  In the morning we toured the dam, but it was very foggy and we couldn't see much.

ship's locks at dam (5 steps)

entry to top of Three Gorges Dam

Buddhist rock carvings at Dazu

A two-hour drive outside of Chongqing lies Dazu,  literally big foot but means 'fullness'. It is a site of  rock carvings (大足石刻, dazu shike). They were made over the course of 70 years in late 12-13 century, mostly Buddhist but some Taoism thrown in.  All the carving sets are didactic, thankfully we had local guide to explain them to us. They are in a remote area so unlike other heritage sites it was not trashed during the cultural revolution.  (Click on link at left for more info from UNESCO.)  Followed by lunch (more hot hot hot dishes) at a lovely restaurant built as pavilions amidst lotus flower ponds.

We love CQ hot and spicy

Chongqing is famous for hot and spicy food. They use fresh Sichuan green peppercorn, chile peppers (fresh and dried, green and red), hot chile oil, any which way of hot...  Most dishes we had were  five-alarm hot --or more!  I could not find a recipe for double spicy chicken (second photo below) but link at left is something similar.  JGN and I disagree on which dish was hottest -- double hot chicken or noodles in hot chile oil.  Beer, which is the best (and necessary) compliment for food this hot, comes in big bottles but is weak (3.5%), like USA near-beer. We drank lots of it. 

L-R: pickled turnip (not hot), sauteed veggie (not hot),
tofu strips and young scallions (very hot)

"shuang la ji" 双辣鸡, double spicy chicken, a mountain of
fresh green peppercorns and green chile peppers with chicken.
(Chicken is not the main ingredient, but an excuse for the peppers)

pork with chile peppers (medium hot)

noodles with chile oil. Elegant but deadly hot.
 I could not get past the first bite but JGN ate it all.

Chongqing

Fly Beijing to Chongqing, for a lecture at Institute of Advanced Study at Chongqing University and the starting point for the Yangtze River cruise. CQ was the wartime capital during the Sino-Japanese war.  It is now the largest city in China (33+ million) and has a blade-runner type feel with closely-built high towers of apartment and office buildings. It was surely once very beautiful,  hilly and part of it is an island in the middle of the Yangtze (lot of bridges). Many of those displaced by three gorges dam were relocated here. Real estate is cheaper here than in Beijing and Shanghai, but someone from the univ. told us she too was a 房奴, fangnu, or slave to the house (mortgage).

Chongqing (Nan-an district) from our hotel

CQ is also hot -- one of China's three ovens (the others being Wuhan and Nanjing) When we arrived it was 99 degrees and the next day it was 104 degrees F.   Despite the heat we visited the Old City, built in Qing dynasty. It helps to carry an umbrella and to walk very, very slowly.

In the Old City there is a restored home of a high Qing official. In the study there are posters, "24 ways of filial piety."  Here, the filial son attracts the mosquitoes so the father may sleep undistured. Just sayin'.

A farmer walking through the Old Town with yangmei (楊梅), aka Chinese bayberry. We discovered this fruit in Beijing. Deep red, texture a little like a strawberry, at once tangy and sweet. Really delicious; I've never seen it in USA, though apparently the juice is sometimes marketed as "yumberry."  (See link left for more info.)  We are also enjoying dragonfruit, mangosteen, lichee (large and juicy, not like pathetic ones sold in USA Chinatowns) and of course, Chinese people's favorite, watermelon.

Hot and spicy -- here, some two dozen varieties of spicy chicken.  Another vendor was selling spicy beef jerky (辣牛肉幹, la niurougan）.  Unfortunately, cannot bring back to USA. But i did buy some fresh green peppercorns from this pepper shop.

selling freshly made noodles (not hot)

After lunch, a short visit to Nankai Zhongxue, where my mother and her siblings went to school during the war.  The school is still reputed to be the best high school in all of China.  Much of the campus is new, but the old library is still there, now nearly completely covered with ivy.  My mom and my aunt still visit their old school friends in Beijing, and my mom goes to monthly alumni luncheons in Queens. 

lecture at Chongqing Univ.

Lady Hu

I wanted to take JGN to the National Theater (aka The Egg) but there were no performances scheduled during our stay.  So we went to see some Peking Opera at Huguang Guild Hall （湖光會館), built in 1802 and a famous opera venue.  It was also where Sun Yat-sen proclaimed the Guomindang (Nationalist Party) in 1912.  The opera hall had magnificent stage and the opera was in the old style, with audience sitting at tables and served tea and little snacks.  We saw excerpts from three stories, the last one about Lady Hu, who valiantly fights her enemies.

Summer Palace and Great Wall

A sunny day at the Summer Palace on the northwestern outskirts of the city (not far from Peking Univ). We came across a group sing-along ("Heart to Heart chorus") ... not just tourists here, many local people come to the park grounds, where the temperature is a bit cooler and the air is a bit less polluted, to hang out, have a little picnic, and sing.  (That's why the Dowager Empress built it, to escape summer heat of  Beijing center).  In China there is mandatory retirement at 55 for men, 50 for women (five years older for university professors and a few others)--to make way for younger workers--so there are a lot people who are not working but still very active. Later we met a flautist who had a concession in the park's Suzhou Street area.  We bought his CD--we think it's perfect for the lanai.

Suzhou Street (notice the blue sky!)

We had Peking duck with my cousin and his family (he is my first cousin on my father's side, a retired heart surgeon at Xuanwu hospital in Beijing).  We went to Quanjude（全聚德 烤鴨店), where roast duck is served in classic style, not like the nouveau roast duck which has less fat (seems like a bad idea, it's so lean anyway, and the little bit of fat on it seems absolutely essential).  Dinner came with a certificate of duck authenticity including its number..  Then we went to his place for whiskey and DVD on his 60-inch screen...  The next day we climbed the Great Wall at Mutianyu.  Rode the cable car up, in a car memorialized as having carried Bill Clinton in 1998 (whatever).  Sun was out, but very hot. I had been feeling guilty about not exercising but this was a real workout.

Everywhere in Beijing are traffic signs with cartoon-y police

We love Peking Duck!

MN & JGN on the wall