Around the World in 365 Days – China portion in conclusion

Day 25; Nov. 11^th: Three Gorges dam: We awoke in Xiling Gorge the site of the Shibao Pagoda (the Shibaozhai temple). Originally, the temple was built at the top of the cliff, and any monks or worshippers needed to climb the cliff to go there. Then, some senior monk decided this was too difficult and built the pagoda – with 99 steps – as the staircase to the temple.

I am willing to walk 99 steps, don’t think I’m willing to climb an 80-foot cliff, so good forward thinking on whoever decided to build the pagoda. John and I really liked our very young tour guide Cindy – we did get her email address, but it does not work with our email accounts. We encouraged her to take every opportunity to travel and see as much of the world as she could.

In the afternoon, I took the tour of the ghost city. “Ghosts” have different meaning depending on the religion. In Buddhism, ghosts have limited meaning, and are simply travelers to their next life; Daoist’s are much more sensitive to ghosts – and all of the spirits must move through Fengdu before being judged and either on to heaven, hell or reincarnation (reincarnation is much less common in Daoism); the tortures of hell are quite dramatically represented at the temple.

Mike was one of the best guides I’d had in China – and spoke English with an American accent.

Dinner was duck – the cook decided that for Rod that didn’t eat pork or seafood, and me that can’t eat beef or pork – duck was the best solution.  I think I ate more duck in the last few days than I’d eaten in 10 years.

Day 26: Nov. 12^th: We docked in Chongqing – and met by our guide on the boat. There was a weird thing about an additional 2 yuan for the porters to take the bags from the boat to the bus and our guide – Royce – took care of it, though it did not keep the porters from keeping indicating they needed to be paid by me and the others. The tour started really well – off to the Chongqing zoo and seeing Pandas!!! I had taken just over 1000 pictures prior to the zoo, when we left the zoo it was over 1400. The pandas are really cute!

Then on to an old city center hub dating back over 400 years where people moved in from the valleys to the city, and those that came before helped them. There was also a temple to the ancestors, and a cool shop where an artist found a way to paint on banyan leaves (the banyan tree is the city tree). Then on to the hot pot for lunch. The hot pot has two sides – a spicy side and a milder side with boiling oil and water. You put what you want into the pot at your desired level of spice. I sat with Rod and his wife, Anne, since Rod shared dietary restrictions. They quickly found the spicy side to be a little too spicy for them so it became my side, and they could put beef in the mild side. Beer and soda was included. John ate with everyone else where everything including pork meatballs went into the broth. We finished the tour of Chongqing at Eling Park – a place Chris had found online. It was beautiful, it also had the site of the one place Chaing Kai-Shek met with Mao Tsedung during the Chinese revolution, but it was the Maoists Communist party that prevailed. Chasing Kai-Shek was initially reviled by the Communists, but modern China recognizes him as a war hero who helped defeat Japan. The house they met is now a tea house, and the entire area is now a beautiful garden.

Our hotel for the night was out near the airport, but we did arrange for massages. They were very nice, more time on the back and less on the feet. And they confirmed before we started that the $35 was the price and no additional was expected. The hotel was not completely finished – they had an indoor pool, but no water, they said they had a sauna – but not yet hooked up, and the TV was extremely complicated – when we got an “engineer” to the room, even he had a terrible time getting it to work. We finally got 2 stations in English – one with old movies and the other the Chinese news station in English.

Day 27, Nov. 13^th: An early start to the airport, but no delays or problems. A 2 ½ hour flight to Beijing, a 4-hour layover at the airport and then back to the US. Did not get as much sleep on the way back. John and I had an empty seat between us, so that was lucky, I watched Aquaman (silly and fun) and Cold Pursuit – a Liam Neeson movie that was not quite as typical, and quirky. After a 12-hour flight we landed in LA. Thank goodness for having Global Entry – we were through customs in no time, and then had to wait forever for our bags (first in, last off).

Some notes and thoughts on travel in China.

Bathrooms: I ragged on squat toilets – and there were some gross ones, just like gross toilets in the US. And it seemed no matter how much practice I got, sometimes I splashed. I did find that western toilets were normally the handicapped toilet – but when 5 buses with 20+ women each arrive at the same time, getting the western toilet made you want to raise your hands and yell “score!”. At about 60% of the main tourist areas they would have 3-4 western toilets, so the odds got better, and in the large roadside stops, about 10% were western toilets. The toilet paper was often on a roll on the wall near the sinks, if they had toilet paper at all, so remember to carry tissues or toilet paper with you. The hand dryers were pretty wimpy.

Infrastructure: Don’t drink the tap water, no smell, but we were warned. But otherwise – the cellular network is strong – I never saw less than 3 bars even travelling through the countryside between cities. The Chinese have invested in the bullet trains to connect all major cities, along with excellent roadways. In the Beijing you have to win a lottery to be able to buy a car, then buy a permit – which is close to $10,000 US, then buy the car which you get to drive every other day (to keep down congestion and pollution).

Chinese Healthcare: Interesting – our first tour guide stated that China did not provide national Healthcare and that was why everyone was good about saving to cover illness. This did not sound correct – so I looked it up, and it was yes and no – 90% of Chinese citizens are covered by a national health insurance partly through employment and partly from their state, which interprets requirements differently (kind of like the different Medicaid rules state to state) – but you have to pay out of pocket first, then get reimbursed for whatever the insurance decided was the real price. In addition, they didn’t cover ambulances, which is likely why we didn’t see many.

Repression: we were shown what they wanted us to see. In general, people did not look “happy”, they looked stressed. We did not arrive at our hotels until 6PM and in most locations we were no where close to the public and to anything to do. The hotels were beautiful, but “gilded cage” comes to mind. We did not know that our trip to the hot pot and the grocery store that first day was the closest we would come to interacting with people unsupervised. Facebook, Google/ Gmail, Twitter and Instagram are blocked in China. I had no problem using Hotmail, aol mail and John had no issues with yahoo. For search engine, we used Bing. Also, no problems getting to my blog. The techie issues were site issues.

Food: The spices were definitely reduced for the westerners in most places. We only got “real heat” at the two hot pots and at the barbeque place in Wu-Xi – all of which were geared for locals. Even when I asked for more spice, it was rarely forthcoming. It did not help that we ended up at a lot of western fast food places, but many times those were some of our only choices over the hotel restaurants (and my one experience with that caused severe GI distress since all pertinent ingredients were not translated).

Pollution: There is still a noted haze in all major cities, but Ken in our group had been in China 4 years ago and says it is much better now. We noticed it, but never felt the need to wear a mask.

Overall – I am really glad I visited China, I don’t need to go back. I developed a great deal of respect for their industrialization and focus on improving their infrastructure. They have gone from a country where “eat your vegetables, there are starving children in China” to a powerhouse of a country, and cannot be ignored or discounted.