Journey to the Celestial Empire, pt 4

Thursday, May 12 -- Norden Camp to Shanghai

   We awakened on another frosty morning in Tibet and prepared to hit the road for Lanzhou. Unlike our trip here, we would not be stopping to see the sights along the way. Instead, we would be taking the most direct route, and it would still be a haul of about four and a half hours.

Sue warms up before our final breakfast in Tibet.

It was almost like the sheep didn't want us to leave. 

Not too far out of Xiahe, we re-entered the modern Chinese highway system,
complete with bilingual signs in Chinese and Tibetan.

   We left the camp at 7am and made only one stop along the way to use the facilities, but it was still a close call at the airport. Fortunately, we found out flight to Shanghai had been delayed by the late departure of a Beijing-bound flight at our gate. One Chinese woman who had missed that flight was giving the gate personnel an earful when we got there. In a way it was gratifying to see that Chinese can be just as upset as Americans when they arrive late and then blame someone else for it. 
   Our flight was a half-hour late but otherwise uneventful. Most of us took the time to get some extra shuteye or catch up on our reading. We got to Hongqiao International in late afternoon and the trusty EXO staff was waiting with our minibus to our destination for the next three nights, the Jing An Shangri-La. Nobody else in our group had stayed there yet, so Sue and I enjoyed filling them in on the hotel's amenities. 
   Our check-in process went just as smoothly as the first time. After a rest and freshening up, we changed clothes and headed up to the Horizon Club Lounge on the 55th floor for the Travel Leaders welcoming reception. A fine time was had by all, and Sue was able to catch up with her good friends and colleagues, Denise Hanson Petricka from Eau Claire, Wis., and Laurie Glomstad Passard from Grand Rapids, Minn., who had spent the previous few days touring Beijing and Xian. Following the reception, dinner was served in the Summer Palace dining room on the 3rd floor. 

From the 55th floor, Laurie took this photo of the sunset over western Shanghai the night of the reception.

Enjoying dinner in the Summer Palace: Bob Decker, Laurie and Denise. 

   With our wake-up call in Tibet and the flight, it didn't take long for our eyes to start drooping. Sue joined Denise and Laurie for a nightcap in the 1515 West bar, but I turned in. The next morning would be a leisurely one for yours truly, as Sue and the rest of the Travel Leaders group attended their International Summit conference. In the afternoon, we would see more of Shanghai. 


Friday, May 13 -- Shanghai

   Sue and her fellow Travel Leaders colleagues attended the Summit conference in the morning. I'd risen early for a swim and then went for a walk around the hotel neighborhood, hoping I'd find another shop selling knives like we'd seen on the way to Tibet. Dave Hershberger and I both regretted not buying a knife there, but although I'm sure they had knife dealers in Shanghai---the city has 25 million people, after all---I couldn't find one, and the concierge said the nearest dealers were about an hour away. By now I was fairly confident in my ability to get around Shanghai, but not that confident. 
   In the afternoon we joined up with Laurie, Denise and a larger group for lunch at the Lost Heaven restaurant and a walk down the Bund, followed by a t'ai chi ch'uan lesson in a nearby park. Sue and I have trained in martial arts for several years and were familiar with this Chinese art thanks to Master Steven Aldus, who teaches at the Share the Martial Arts camp we attend every August, hosted by our good friend Lloyd Brown, a karate sensei in our area. The class we would experience here in Shanghai was taught by a pair of masters, a man and a woman, and was very introductory. Even so, everyone else in our group, none of whom had any previous martial arts experience besides what they'd seen on TV, could see how difficult it actually is to perform these moves, in spite of how easy they appear. 

Lunch at the Lost Heaven was, well, heavenly...

...but it was almost a shame we had to disassemble these presentations to eat the food.

The Bund was busy again on this Friday as we took our stroll. 

Unlike the visit Sue and I had the previous week, we weren't able to go inside the hotels, like the Fairmont Peace.

   There were other tours available, and the Lees chose to join up with the popular guided bicycle ride through some of Shanghai's side streets. 

Bridget gets ready to saddle up, this time on a bike in Shanghai rather than a horse in Tibet. (WL)

Bonnie made sure to get a bike with a large basket, in case there would be shopping. (WL)

The bikers got off the beaten path pretty quickly. (WL)

And the paths got narrower. (WL)

Roger Block, in the blue, was along for the ride, too. Roger was our host for the Summit. (WL)

The bike tour stopped to tour the home of a typical Shanghai urban family, including their poodles. (WL)

(WL)

(WL)

(WL)

(WL)

After the home visit, the riders mounted up for the trek back to the Shangri-La. (WL)

   Back to the hotel for a light dinner and change, we rushed to our evening entertainment, a performance of the Shanghai ERA acrobatic troupe. To be honest, some of us were getting a little tired and wouldn't have minded staying at the hotel for the evening, but everyone decided to go and in the end, were glad they did. It was a spectacular show featuring the best of Chinese acrobatics. Never again will I wonder how the Chinese can be so successful in Olympic gymnastics; Chinese athletes have dominated the sport in the last two Olympic Games and are expected to do the same this summer in Rio. Here's a video clip I shot of two different exhibitions: Shanghai ERA Acrobatics.

   As much as we enjoyed the show, we were ready to hit the hay, anticipating our final full day in China, when we would visit the famed Tongli Water Village.

Saturday, May 14 -- Tongli Ancient Town

   Located about 50 miles from Shanghai, the Tongli Ancient Town, also known as the Water Village. was our destination for our last full day in China. Built during the Song Dynasty (960-1279), the village sits next to the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, next to Taihu Lake. It has earned the nickname of "Venice of the Orient" for its canals. Covering about 80 acres and home to about 2,000 residents, the village has been preserved to a great extent and has been open to the public for 30 years. 

   Our group, now numbering about 100 people, boarded a pair of ultra-modern, German-built tour buses for the jaunt, which took about two hours, much of it devoted to getting out of the city. (Had we taken the bullet train, the ride would've been a half-hour long.) Once we got into the countryside we got a good look at Chinese farms. Unlike American farms, those in China are smaller and much less mechanized, but still efficient: although only 15 percent of land in China is arable, its farmers produce about 20 percent of all the world's food. They have enough to feed their own people, no small task in a land of over a billion mouths to feed, and export a lot of food, in keeping with China's standing as the world's foremost trading partner. 

   About 300 million farmers work the land in China, but the average size of a farm is very small, about 1.6 acres. By comparison, the average American farm is about 440 acres. Rice is their most important crop, comprising about 25% of the country's agricultural output, but they also grow a lot of wheat, corn and just about everything else, including citrus. They are the world's top producer of cotton, and they are heavily into livestock as well, although not necessarily dairy cattle. More than 90% of all Chinese are lactose-intolerant. During our entire visit, I never once saw milk served at a restaurant, nor was it offered, not even at the sumptuous breakfast buffets at our hotels in Shanghai and Lanzhou.

Chinese farms don't have a lot of machinery, but they do have a lot of people. (lilianpitaro photo)

      We arrived at Tongli in late morning and were on our own for the rest of our visit. Like the real Venice, in Italy, Tongli has the canals, and lots of shops, some of them selling the usual kitschy tourist items, but others offering high-quality goods. One thing most of our group wanted to do was actually ride in the gondolas. 

Our guide for the day explains the history of Tongli.

The gondolas, very similar to those we saw in Venice, awaited us in Tongli.

We toured a nobleman's dwelling. This is the entrance hall, where the noble and his wife greeted guests. 

The house's private garden and pond was well-stocked.

At one of the many shops, the vendor shows off his wares. We purchased some artwork like the scrolls
he's pointing to, only much more elaborate, from an artist's shop for about $16 US. Similar work
back home would've been at least ten times that cost. This shop, like a few others we saw,
also sold knives, although not nearly of the quality we saw before, so Dave H and I passed.

At one point our guide wanted to show us the narrowest street
in the village. We could believe it. 

Some shops, selling women's and children's clothing,
utilized models to draw customers.

The gondola ride was very pleasant. Each gondola was crewed by a woman gondolier, and unlike their
Venetian counterparts, none of them sang a note. 

The water was low enough that we could successfully negotiate many of the city's 55 bridges.

Sue, Denise and Laurie, who have now attended to the past four International Summits together.

Chinese love their dogs, although they aren't as common as we have in America.
Beijing and Shanghai each have ordinances limiting families to one dog. Those they
are allowed to have, though, are often artificially colorful.

   Here are a couple videos I shot during our visit. The first was from our gondola: Tongli gondola ride. And the second from a show that was on stage in the town square: Tongli Stage Show. We'd gathered there after the ride as we were preparing to depart the village. 

   Our time in Tongli had been well-spent, but as we headed back to Shanghai we were also thinking of our final event of the trip. This evening would be the traditional International Summit gala.

   This was the event where the women would be dressed to the nines and us guys would be challenged to match them. Of course that was impossible, so we just did our best. We boarded our buses again for a short jaunt down to the Bund and Kathleen's Waitan Restaurant, which offered as its main attraction a spectacular view of Shanghai's nighttime skyline. All of these photos are courtesy of Walt Lee. 

   The group was in good spirits during the cocktail hour, and the dinner that followed was the last of our series of great meals in China. 

   Walt was kind enough to offer individual couples a chance to pose for a once-in-a-lifetime picture with the Shanghai skyline behind. Here are the ones featuring the members of our Tibet group. Dave Hershberger completed the series with a shot of Walt, Bonnie and Bridget.

Ann Waters and Dave Falkner.

Leslie Flood and Dave Hershberger.

Sue and yours truly. 

Last, but certainly not least, Walt, Bridget and Bonnie Lee.

      And of course the Tibet gang had to have one last group photo. 

   By the time the festivities were done, we were all feeling pretty good, and not just from the libations we'd consumed during the evening. It had been one last magical day in a magical place. Some summit attendees would be staying on for another several days to take tours, many of them on a cruise of the Yangtze River, but we would be heading for home. A long day of travel lay ahead, but as we hit the hay in the Jing An Shangri-La that night, it was with a feeling that a good time had indeed been had by all.

Sunday, May 15 -- From Shanghai to home.

   Sometimes the best part about a trip is the day you go home. It's been a long trip, you're anxious to see family and pets again, to get back into a regular routine, even if it means going back to work. But there's always a feeling of sadness, too. You will be saying goodbye to new friends that you might not get to see for awhile, and in our case, we would be saying goodbye to a country that we might not visit again. 

   We were checked out of the hotel and transported to the airport with the usual efficiency and courtesy we'd come to expect in China. The trip to Pudong International, on a Sunday morning this time, went more quickly than our original trip from Pudong to the hotel had gone, with much less traffic to contend with. It didn't take too long before we were in the air again, beginning the long 13-hour flight back to Detroit. The only plus was that we would be going back in time, in a very real sense, regaining the hours on the clock we'd lost on the outbound trip ten days before. 

   Our arrival in Detroit was right on time, and it was still midday Sunday, although our internal clocks argued for midnight. After a short layover we were back in the air for our last hop to Minneapolis, and from there was our usual drive home. By the time we were back under our own roof, it was around dinnertime. After dropping off Sue and unloading our luggage, I was back on the road for the hour-long drive up to the Hayward area to get our dog, Sophie, from the kennel, something we'd originally planned to do the next day. But we missed her terribly and I decided not to wait another 12 hours. I had just enough energy to make the round trip safely. She was very glad to see me and ecstatic when she got home. We were glad, too, and pretty tired as well. 

   

It wasn't long before Sophie was back on watch, keeping an eye out for critters.

   Many people would ask me in the following days about how the trip went, how was China, how were the people? My answers (the short versions): very well, very big and exotic, and very nice. There was much to be impressed with by China. The people are hard-working, they are fit and healthy, and they appear to be well-organized. The society we engaged with appeared orderly and secure. Yes, they have obvious challenges with regard to their environment, and it remains to be seen how long they can sustain their impressive, rapid economic growth. Given more time and more appropriate venues, we might have talked a little more about politics, but that wasn't really why we were there. We went to see the country, experience the culture, meet the people, and that we did. The contrasts were vivid, going from a city of 25 million people to a camp in Tibet with 9. You can't get much more of a contrast than that. 

   All in all, it was a great trip, certainly one of the best we'd ever been on. Will we go back to China? Of course we didn't get to scale the Great Wall or view the amazing Terracotta Warriors of Xian, as Denise and Laurie did, along with many others who attended the Summit. So there will be ample reason to go back to China. Until then, our memories of this trip will have to do, and they will be ample and rich. 

   What of the future of China, and its relations with the United States? Sixty-six years ago, Chinese and American soldiers were shooting at each other in the mountains of Korea. Since then there has been an uneasy peace between us, and certainly now an economic and military rivalry is underway. If this visit proved anything for me, it is that we do not want China as our enemy. It would be much better for all of us, and for the world, for our two peoples to be friends. Or, as the Chinese say,

三人一条心，黄土变成金 

( sān rén yì tiáo xīn, huáng tǔ biàn chéng jīn)

If people are of one heart, even the yellow earth can become gold. 

Journey to the Celestial Empire, part 1

This guest post is by Dave Tindell.


    A thousand years ago, when Europeans first ventured to the Far East, crossing vast deserts and gigantic mountain ranges, the called the land they discovered Cathay. They found a nation of people who had a strong and complex culture, one which developed the use of paper money, gunpowder, and many other things unknown in the West. To the vast majority of Europeans, and later Americans, it remained a mysterious land until well into the last third of the 20th century. Only in recent years has travel to this huge country from the West begun to increase, and now it was our turn to journey to what was once known as the Celestial Empire: China.

   Before we begin, a word or two about photos. Most of them are mine and Sue's; those marked with (WL) and (DH) are credited to our traveling companions, Walt Lee (and his daughter Bridget) and Dave Hershberger. You can click on any photo to enlarge it.




Thursday, May 5 -- to Minneapolis and east, then west. Way west.


   It was back in the summer of 2015 that Sue asked if I would want to accompany her to China the following May for her Travel Leaders International Summit. Previous summits had taken her to Scotland (2015), Turkey ('14) and South Africa ('13). Let's just say she didn't have to wait around for my answer.
    The conference would be held in Shanghai, and Travel Leaders had, as usual, provided its attendees with a tempting list of excursions to be taken before or after the meetings. Although tempted by the cruise on the Yangtze River, we decided to get off the beaten path and head to Gansu Province, in the far west of the country, and stay at a camp in the grasslands of Tibet, which sounded as exotic as we could get. We would soon find it to be even more exotic than we imagined.
   The worst thing about going to China from America, especially the Midwest where we live, is the travel. Sue booked us for a short hop eastward from Minneapolis to Detroit, and then a long haul from there over the western U.S. and the Pacific Ocean directly to Shanghai. We were wheels-up in Minneapolis at 11am today and 90 minutes later were on the ground in Detroit. After a short layover we boarded our Delta Airlines 747 for the long haul, departing around 4:30pm EDT.







Our flight to Shanghai awaits. Hopefully they were topping off the tank.

   We were in the main cabin with premium comfort seating, giving us extra legroom, which was great for a long trip. You have to resign yourself to the fact that you'll be there for awhile. Wear loose-fitting clothes, shoes that can easily be slipped on and off, and bring plenty of reading material and a sleep aid. Dinner was served shortly after we reached cruising altitude and the schedule said there would be a midflight snack and then breakfast before arriving in Shanghai. And of course there would be plenty of movies available for viewing on the screens in front of us. I'd brought along my new Kindle Fire as well as my Surface laptop, so I could work on my writing projects.
   Shanghai was 13 hours ahead of Wisconsin time, so we knew it would be Friday evening there when we arrived. There are lots of theories about how to deal with jet lag, and for me this would be my first time flying across the Pacific, so we would see how things worked out. Our plan was to try to sleep for four or five hours on the flight and then hit the hay around 9pm local time Friday. On this flight, we stayed awake long enough to have the midflight snack and then were able to nod off. When we awoke, we were only a couple hours from landing.




Friday, May 6 -- Arrival in Shanghai, China.


   China is a huge country in almost every measurable way. It is the third-largest in the world in terms of land area (3.6 million square miles), trailing Russia and Canada and just a bit larger than the United States. In population, it is first with 1.375 billion people, 18.8% of the world's population. It is just ahead of India in that category and we are a distant third. In terms of coastline, we have 37% more than China does, and when it comes to inland water (lakes, rivers) we have nearly three times as much as they do, which makes China a much drier country than America. We didn't know going in that China has much less water than we do, but we would soon find out.
   We landed at Shanghai Pudong International Airport, our introduction to the largest city in China. Indeed, at 25 million population, it is the largest in the world, just ahead of Karachi, Pakistan, but fortunately it has about half the population density of Karachi. By comparison with New York City (21st on the list), Shanghai's density is only about 40% of the Big Apple's. Pudong handles almost all the international flights coming into and leaving Shanghai and serves over 60 million passengers per year. That's a lot of people, but it is only the 13th busiest in the world in that respect, and trails Beijing, which is the busiest in China.
   Pudong was our first exposure to China and it was a favorable impression. Ultra-modern and well-organized, it keeps people moving and offers virtually all of the conveniences today's international traveler expects from an airport. Signage is in English as well as Chinese, and we moved through customs without trouble. One of the first things I noticed was that there was a minimal security presence, at least that which could be seen. We were well aware that China is a totalitarian state, ruled by the Communist Party since 1949, but you wouldn't know that by Pudong, and indeed, we would find that the police presence in China was very low-key, less perhaps even than New York's. 






No matter what airport you're at, the baggage claim wait is universal.

   Travel Leaders had contracted with EXO Travel to provide our in-country tours, and we were met at Pudong by a smiling young Chinese gentleman named Andrew, who escorted us to a waiting car and accompanied us on the hour-long drive to our hotel. Although Pudong is only 19 miles from the center of Shanghai, traffic can be a challenge, especially on a Friday evening. Travelers can take the maglev train from the airport, reducing the time to only ten minutes or so, but that was an option we weren't aware of at the time. This high-speed train operates with magnetic levitation, and the Shanghai line was the first of its kind in the world. The train reaches a top speed of about 270 mph in just over two minutes. We would soon discover that China leads the world in "bullet train" track, with nearly 12,000 miles in service and another 11,000 under construction.
   Later on in our trip, another tour guide would explain that many young Chinese also have Westernized names, which they usually choose for themselves in grade school when they first begin their study of English. The great majority of Chinese learn English this way, and in Shanghai we would see street signs in both languages.
   Our hotel for our Shanghai stays--we would have two nights on this leg, three nights on the back end of the trip--was the Jing An Shangri-La, located in the Jing An Kerry Center, a large complex of skyscrapers, shopping malls and restaurants. Our home for our first two nights in China was on the 39th floor, and offered an amazing view of the city. By the time of our check-in, we were ready to hit the hay after some 26 hours of travel since leaving our home in northwest Wisconsin early Thursday morning.






Our room at the ultra-modern Jing An Shangri-La was inviting indeed.



The view of Shanghai at night gave us a taste of things to come.

Saturday, May 7 -- Shanghai.


   The day's original plan called for a bicycle tour of the city this morning, but Andrew had informed us the night before that our guide was ill, so he'd arranged an alternative tour for us: a walking tour of the Bund area. After a good night's sleep, I rose at 6am and hit the hotel pool for a swim, getting my first look at the Shangri-La's outstanding fitness center.






The lobby of the Shangri-La was modern and inviting, and the customer service was exceptional.



Swimming in this pool was pure pleasure.



On Sunday morning, Sue and I would get in a workout in the hotel's
outstanding fitness center.

   Andrew met us in the lobby around 9am and asked if we would like to take the subway to the Bund. Having both experienced subways in major American and Canadian cities, we said yes, absolutely. Two blocks from our hotel was a station, and we were soon whizzing along the tracks of what by every measure was a modern, and fast, subway. Andrew told us that on weekdays some 10 million people a day ride Shanghai Metro, which has 365 miles of track, making it the biggest in the world. There are plans to double that size within the next ten years. Andrew told us the entire system had been built within the last 30 years. That was something we would hear over and over again in China, and as evidenced by the construction cranes and vehicles we saw everywhere, the building shows no signs of slowing down.
   Our walk and subway ride made some immediate impressions on us. First, this is a very clean city, considering it has so many people. There is very little litter and no graffiti. Advertising signs are everywhere and the marketing is non-stop, even including signs on the handles you grip on the subway and buses. And as I would confirm later on by watching some of their television, their ads are just as slick as ours. The people are polite but they don't make eye contact like Americans are wont to do. Younger people are just as addicted to their smart phones as ours are. And they are very fit; we saw no obese people anywhere. That seems hard to believe, but when we got home I looked it up. The official obesity rate in China is about 5%, climbing to 20% in some cities where fast food (chiefly imported from America) is invading their culture. I read recently that in Japan, the obesity rate is only 2%. In America, it is about 33%. Although the sources I read said that one-fifth of big-city Chinese are seriously overweight, we didn't see any evidence of that in Shanghai.






The streets of Shanghai were modern, clean and very busy.

   Andrew escorted us from the subway stop to the Bund, sometimes called the Waitan. It is a district along the western bank of the Huangpu River and was the financial center of East Asia in the first half of the 20th century. Those were the days when European powers like Great Britain and France, along with the United States, pretty much ran the show in Shanghai and in much of eastern China. The colonial powers built banks, hotels and social clubs, leaving an architectural imprint that the communists, thankfully, decided to preserve and even feature as Shanghai's most prominent tourist attraction.
   EXO had contracted with Shanghai Culture Tours for our visit to the Bund, and our guide was an entertaining Frenchman named Didier Pujol, who had resided in the city for several years. Check out his blog here: Shanghai Culture Tours. For the next few hours we strolled the wide pedestrian way on the riverfront beside Zhongshan Road. We saw many couples who had just been married, posing for photos along the Bund. Didier seemed to know everything about every building: its history, its architecture, and its present-day use.




On a hazy Saturday morning, the Bund was just starting to get busy.



One of the many restaurants along the Bund:
The House of Roosevelt, www.27bund.com.
Owned by Roosevelt China Investments Corp.,
chaired by Tweed Roosevelt, great-grandson of our 26th president.



A unique topiary garden across the Waibaidu Bridge, near the Astor Hotel.



Across the Huangpu is modern East Shanghai, home of distinctive landmarks
like the Oriental Pearl Radio & TV Tower in the middle of the picture.

   One of the Bund's most interesting buildings, with which our guide was very familiar, is the Fairmont Peace Hotel. Built in the early 20th century by Sir Victor Sassoon, an Iraq-borne Sephardic Jew of British nationality who is one of the unique characters in Shanghai history, it is the building with the green pyramid roof in the photo below, lifted from the hotel's site. Didier was able to take us inside and describe the history and distinctive features of the hotel. Take a few minutes to check out the hotel's website at the link above. Our next visit to Shanghai will probably include a stay here.

   After our tour, we parted company with Didier and Andrew hailed a cab to take us back to the Shangri-La. Our afternoon activity was a massage treatment at the hotel spa, just what the doctor ordered to deal with our leftover jet lag. That evening we dined in the hotel restaurant and had a drink in the bar, 1515 West, where the house band was getting cranked up for the evening.
    But we didn't stay too long, because the next morning we would be heading to another airport for the next leg of our journey. We would fly west to the city of Lanzhou in Gansu Province and after one night there, we would travel by road to the foothills of the Himalayas for our camping adventure in Tibet.





As we went to sleep that Saturday night in Shanghai, we eagerly anticipated
our trip to Tibet. We would not be disappointed.