Heading into the Home Stretch....

Back Down to Earth

Yet another plane ride and we all breathe a sigh of relief upon landing.  Never has effortless breathing felt so good. We've got a day to kill in Chongqing before we get on our boat for our trip down the Yangtze. First stop is the Three Gorges Dam Museum which puts a very positive spin on flooding numerous villages, antiquities etc. etc.  It is stressed numerous times how harnessing the Yangtze has saved many lives previously lost to the river's dangerous storms and flooding.  Foreshadowing perchance? The irony will dawn on us a couple of weeks later when 400+ people are killed on the River during a violent storm.

The modern museum building was quite a contrast to the building opposite....

as you can see from this photo.

One of the antiquities from the museum.

The very modern dome of the museum.

We all head to lunch ecstatic at the thought of no more Yak and devour many things that we can't identify with gusto and gratitude.  We then head off to the General Stilwell Museum.   Stilwell was an "old China hand" when such people still existed.  He was instrumental in helping the Chinese win the War of Resistance against the Japanese.  There was an adjacent Flying Tigers Museum that highlighted the guys who flew "over the hump" from India to supply the Chinese when the Burma Road was taken by the Japanese.

The original map showing the route "over the hump".

Stilwell's rather spartan bedroom.

These jeeps were part of the museum. Interestingly they have more recent California plates, so it looks like they were procured for the museum.

Why They Are Called "The Greatest Generation"

Here's why.  The Flying Tigers flew over the Himalayas in winds of up to 150-200 MPH in ice and snow, with virtually no weather forecasting and no radar. Some pilots did up to three trips per day. The planes were cargo planes and weren't for the most part armed. The Japanese pilots would go after them sometimes. One pilot fired a Browning rifle from his cockpit and took the attacking Japanese plane down.  Really.  They flew every day, day and night, from April '42 to August '45.  They delivered over 650,000 tons of material.  They lost 468 aircraft and 1,314 pilots and crew.  About 1,200 pilots and crew were shot down and had to be rescued or "walk out" including many familiar names such as Eric Sevareid (legendary newsman and womanizer).  Once we met a guy who had flown "the hump"in the Dominican Republic.  He was always in a hammock.  He deserved it.

A more modern map in the Flying Tiger museum showing the Ledo & Burma roads.

While in the museum we got a demonstration of creating a Chinese painting.

The finished product.

As you can see from this series of photos, Times Square has nothing on Chongqing.

Starbucks was everywhere we went in China.

The Westin was emphasizing the Chinese year of the goat.

Rolling Down the Yangtze

Finally time to board the boat.  It is not particularly easy.  They have taken all our checked luggage aboard before us, thank God, because there are about a hundred or so downward steps before you reach the gangway that spans, oh, maybe seven pontoons before you reach the objective/boat.  Our travel gang is in a festive mood at the thought of no more steps and an all inclusive wine bar.  Life is good.  We endure the safety talk (while eyeing the wine bar) and pay scant attention to various life preserving instructions.  Ah, had we known THEN what we know NOW we would have been taking copious notes.

We set sail after dark and in the morning I go to our balcony to observe life floating by.  There are still skyscrapers and civilization.  I am bummed.  But things rapidly get more pastoral --to the extent that you could believe you have awakened in one giant Chinese scroll painting.  The one with softly clinging mists and vertical cliffs rising from jade green waters.  The water is actually GREEN by the second day.  It may be the only thing we have seen in China that appears untainted.  This is because the rains haven't begun yet.

This was a resort built on the Yangtze that went bankrupt according to our guide.

The Yangtze carries a tremendous amount of commercial traffic...

as can be seen in these photos.

We also passed tombs in a cemetery on the hillside.

The boat docks that afternoon and we all trail off to visit Shibaozhai (Pearl of the Yangtze).  We run the gauntlet of vendors selling velvet panda paintings, knock off everythings and peculiar nude postcards and climb (yet again) another hill which leads to the huge wooden pagoda.  The Pagoda is on an island and one must first traverse the swinging cable bridge spanning the gorge.  Here comes Phobia #1 big time. The bridge is long.  The bridge is high.  The bridge is FULL of people merrily being thrown hither and thither as the bridge jumps and sways. I hate it. But I do it.  And then, for the second time on the trip, I ditch -- along with two of my previous deserter pals.  Just LOOK at those pictures. They are climbing up and down LADDERS in that thing.  There is no such concept as Maximum Capacity in this country. Maximum Capacity is when it implodes.

A typical terraced plot tended by villagers.

A washer woman exhorted Sue to remove her shirt so she could beat it clean. Sue declined.

When we docked there were often two or three other ships "in port".  Sometimes you had to walk across other ships to reach the gangway.  They gave you lanyards with your ship's name in case you became disoriented.  Really... how old ARE we?

This is the seawall built to protect the pagoda.  It's taller than it looks.

The dreaded swinging bridge.  It didn't HAVE to be a swinging bridge.  What were they thinking?

As you reach the top, the angle of climb gets steeper until you are ascending ladders cheek to butt with the person before you.  Very appealing.

The next several photos were taken within the Red Pagoda.

The evil bridge from above.  It was MUCH more crowded when we crossed.

The engineering that went into the Three Gorges project is pretty astounding.  They had to build a 150 foot high wall around this Pagoda (like a sea wall) to preserve it when they flooded the Valley. They moved over 1.4 million people (some were less than pleased I presume-- although they didn't dwell on that).  They submerged 13 cities, 140 towns and 1,350 villages.  I am not making that up.  It was a little weird realizing you were floating over the abandoned homes of 1.4 million people.

Like any cruise, we were "treated"' to an extravaganza.  It actually was pretty good.

Many of the crew members appeared to be about 12 including the Captain which was a bit unsettling.

Note the shoes. Try walking on these on the cobblestones of Ajijic!

It is possible her father was a cowboy.  Otherwise, inexplicable.

The ship's doctor gave a demonstration of traditional medicine including cupping.  Also acupuncture, acupressure and scraping.

Aussie John pronounced the treatments "helpful" but declined the offered follow up treatment which was somewhere around 600 Yuan.  There is always an angle, isn't there........

The next day on the River was even more "trapped in a scroll painting" than the last.  No cars can get here.  Houses are perched on the cliffs with little terraced plots -- DAMN. JUST like in those scroll paintings.  I swear.  We sail through the 25 mile long Wuxia (Witches) Gorge "...famous for its fabled 12 peaks.  According to legend, the peaks are believed to be the spirits of 12 fairies, the most famous of them being Shennu Feng (Goddess) Peak, topped by a huge rock resembling a kneeling maiden.  I don't see it.  Maybe I lack imagination or vision.  Probably both.

All along the river were caves of varying sizes.  At one point you could see the path that was used by workmen to pull the boats through the rapids before the Three Gorges Dam was completed.  Not a pleasant job.

I was relieved to be spared these stairs.  Boat kept chugging past.

Goddess Peak (note figure to left)

Closer up of Goddess Peak.  The Goddess is reputedly the stone in the center of the photo.

Could be hundreds of years ago.  Not often you get a photo in China where the present doesn't intrude.

We dock again and this time we get off and get on wee, little boats.  Now we will go up wee, little Gorges that are really, really neat.  But, of course,  at the end of the Gorge there is a "traditional music and dance show".  REALLY?  At the end of a tiny, wee little Gorge inaccessible by car or donkey? WHY?  The Gorges were showy enough.  What POSSESSES these people to compulsively dance and sing?  Rebels that we are, we refuse to leave our boat to attend the show.  We are regarded warily by the more compliant tourists in surrounding boats.  They probably think we are German.

The wee little boat for negotiating the wee little gorges.

And one of the small gorges.  At times there would only be several feet on either side of the boat.

After another night cruising on the river, we pulled in and docked.  We had traversed the locks overnight and now backtracked via bus to take a look at the dam itself.  It is a behemoth all right but strangely I wasn't as impressed by it as I was by the Hoover Dam.  First of all, the Hoover Dam is all Art Deco-y and Three Gorges is very concrete-y and blah.  The locks were neat.  Enough on that. Once more we embarked the boat to travel through one more gorge before we got off in Yichang. From there it was the airport and off to Shanghai.

There are five locks in all.  We passed through at night.  Michael saw part of it but I slept.  Which is probably just as well (phobia #2)

In addition to the locks they are completing an elevator which will hold very large, but not the largest, boats on the river.

FINALLY!  An escalator!  Thank God!  This one took you to the top of the overlook of the Three Gorges Dam.

Word cannot express how much the Chinese adore having their pictures taken upon, over, under or straddling any point or object of even marginal interest.  

There are very formal gardens everywhere -- even between the locks.

This is the portion of the dam where they are building an elevator to bypass the five locks and lower ships in forty-five minutes rather than the five and a half hours it takes to go through the five locks.

A Bit of Modern History (or Mao vs. Ming)

Shanghai has been a VERY political city for a long time so let's spend a minute on Communist history ( I know you love it).  Let's talk about the Great Leap Forward. This was Mao's 2nd 5 year plan and it was, at best, ill conceived.  It lasted from 1958-1963 and resulted in somewhere between 36 and 45 MILLION deaths by starvation (and/or torture).  One could predict it would not go well with Mao issuing statements such as:  "We face a new war.   A war on Nature."  The Great Leap Forward years included the Great Famine Years of 1959-1962 when most deaths occurred --but widespread hunger was a fact of life for a decade more.  Characteristically, the Chinese refer to the Great Famine as "The Three Years of Difficulty".  I'd say.

On a bus ride Yuan described one of his homework assignment when he was in grammar school.
"So, we had to go home and kill sparrows and chop their heads off and bring the heads to school.  You see the sparrows ate grain and we needed all the grain.  You could eat the rest of the sparrow.  Bigger kids had to kill rats.  It's quite hard to trap sparrows by the way."  They are SO matter of fact about this stuff.  There were claims of cannibalism during the worst of it but I refuse to write one more account of cannibalism encountered on our travels.

So, somehow they endure the Great Leap Forward and then Mao comes up with the equally dazzling idea of The Cultural Revolution.  This innovation is to get rid of the "elites" who have emerged who he fears will become modern mandarins and (importantly) ruin his parade.  So, he harnesses the endless energy and zeal for revolt of adolescents and closes down the schools and encourages the students to turn on the elites (like their teachers or parents).  Well, one thing leads to another and they get a little out of control so he dispatches them all to the countryside where they continue to wreak havoc but at least are out of his way.

We had a lecturer who had lived through the Cultural Revolution.  His father was a teacher and when he was 13 he told us he was sent to the country and forced to work in agriculture.  Of course, none of these kids had any idea what was involved-- being city kids from Shanghai-- and they starved to varying degrees.  I didn't think about it at the time, but now I wonder if he was part of the Red Guards (student revolutionaries).  He never really got into that.  It is still very difficult to really get to the bottom of a lot of things in China. A little Mexican that way.  Hmmmm.....

It's True What They Say...

Remember all those old movies where they talk about being "Shanghaied"?  Well this was the only city where words of caution were uttered by Yuan.  "Do NOT go with anyone to a bar for a drink because they will charge you $1,200 for a bottle of booze and if you don't pay they will beat you up." OK.  Got it.  That said, Shanghai was probably our favorite city.  It is the New China and the Old China. Michael will insert photos of the Bund and Pudong with the river Huangpu separating them. Bund-- old Colonial Shanghai.  Pudong -- New China.  We never saw a more dramatic juxtaposition in our travels.

Old Shanghai.  I can't remember if it was a lighthouse or a place to watch for tsunami's.

New Shanghai - the iconic CCTV tower

New Shanghai - where the alien's landed

20 years ago Pudong was all farms.  Now...well...this....

The Bund area features amazing Art Deco, Empire, Victorian and a slew of other architectural styles.

Ah. malls, the world's unifying culture.

Too cute not to include.  All the parent's encourage their kids to say "Hi" in English.  Adorable.

OK.  Enough.  What is interesting is there will be skyscrapers and right below you may notice a little leafy neighborhood with maybe ten or fifteen houses in it.  One wonders for how long...

Our next stop was the Yu Yuan Gardens which is actually a complex of houses, pavilions and gardens right in the heart of modern Shanghai.  The pictures are really the highpoint of this place.

Another Chinese lion. By now you should be able to identify the sex of the lion.  A clue is in the feet. Or under the feet.

The gardens were truly an oasis of delightful calm in busy, crowded Shanghai.

The owner and creator of the gardens had this dragon placed in the garden. At this time only the emperor was allowed to use the dragon. When the emperor's representatives came to visit, the owner convinced them it was a unicorn and not a dragon (along with a suitable payment of money as an inducement to convince them).

A moon gate is a very important addition to any Chinese garden.

The stone in the middle was very important in a feng shui sense because of the large number of holes.

Deirdre resting on the rock after a long day of touring.

Our final stop in Shanghai (we could have used two more days there) was at the first worker's housing project in Shanghai called Caoyang New Village, which was built in the 1950's.  I'm picturing Soviet style concrete bunkers when we pull up to a street with a canopy of Sycamores next to a canal filled with water hyacinths in bloom.   Well, this is a surprise!  We get a little talk at the Community Center and then we are off to a lunch with a family that lives within the community. This had to be one of, if not the best meals we had on the entire trip.  True, I still didn't recognize everything but it was all delicious.

The very modern and elegant looking community center.

Looking at these tree lined streets and the lack of traffic, you would never suspect you were in the largest Chinese city by population and the largest city proper in the world (24 million as of 2013). There certainly were not 3,700 people in this portion of the square kilometer.

From there it was on the plane the next day and back to the States.  We were able to spend days on either end of the trip with our son Justin in Los Angeles which is always fun.  So, finally we will begin to post on our life in Ajijic once more.  Rainy season has started, the mountains are green, the fiestas continue...  More soon.