Beijing Looking Back

        Despite being somewhat sick, likely food-related, during our time in Beijing, I left with a favorable impression of this giant Chinese city.  What I was dreading most was awful air pollution, but we were incredibly fortunate to have relatively good air all three days while we were there.  Terry went to lunch on Tuesday with a native Beijinger, who said that they had clear skies and air like Tuesday’s about once every three years!  This was what it was like during the 2008 Olympics, she said, “although they cheated then”!  Check out the great visibility from this vista on top of the Drum Tower on Tuesday afternoon, looking south toward elevated pagodas of Jingshan Park in the center on the horizon.  Jingshan overlooks Forbidden City to its south.  It's a hill constructed of the earth that was dug out to create the moat that surrounds Forbidden City.  

     Terry and I both noticed that the people we saw on the Beijing streets seemed more relaxed and happy than in some cities.  I also found ordinary people to be friendly and helpful.  I suppose everyone was in a better mood because they were breathing easier.  But I think that people in the part of the city where we stayed probably aren’t restless as they are in some other cities.  They are settled and assured, and they are content, because they’ve arrived.  There’s no better place to aspire to because they’re about as close as a person can get to the heart of China, to the very best place in the world, the middle of the Middle Kingdom, which is the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square.

     Some scenes in Beijing were so Chinese.  The car traffic was relentless, accompanied by lots of impatient honking.  It was nearly impossible to cross the broad streets, so you had to use the go-under tunnels. There were bicycles, scooters and cargo bikes zipping everywhere—you had to be on guard constantly.  One morning when I went out early to buy water, I watched several older men ride up to the neighborhood Wu Mart (!) on ancient bicycles, each with his wife on a custom comfy padded seat on the back or in a side car.  They lined up early outside the door, shopping totes in hand, ready to be the first ones in to snap up the freshest fish and vegetables.   Young people were bustling to work, munching their street food breakfast on the way, steamed buns, tea eggs, egg wraps with lettuce.  Old men sat and visited or just watched the world go by.  There were street vendors, some established, some impromptu, selling hot food, snacks and drinks, fruit, books, soft goods, you name it.  There was a fine coat of dust everywhere, especially characteristic of Beijing, which is on the edge of a desert.  

     That helped business at this thriving sidewalk business, which sold plants, fresh flowers, cacti, garden seeds and goldfish.  The secret for sales was misting the plant leaves regularly, which made everything look so much fresher and healthier than the surrounding vegetation.  I smiled at finding dandelion and something like chickweed among the vegetable seeds. 

     Contrasting with the Chinese-ness all around us were quite a few young musicians entertaining with Western songs on acoustic guitars.  In the go-under tunnel nearest our hotel there was a different musician strumming away and singing for tips every night, all of them tuneful and confident.  There were a few of them sitting on the steps outside bars and restaurants in the hutongs, the alley ways in the old parts of the city, close to the Drum Tower.  One afternoon on the subway a young guy got on the very last car, which was less crowded—this was where I’d learned to board to avoid the sardine can experience, if possible.  He strolled and serenaded with “Sounds of Silence”.  He looked Chinese-American in his Nikes, warm-up pants and denim jacket, guitar case slung over his shoulder, but his army green baseball cap with the little red star front and center said “I am one of you”. 

Visit to Forbidden City

     Despite the unappealing prospect of excess everything--crowds, lines, scale, splendor--I went to Forbidden City Monday.  It's China's largest and best-preserved cluster of ancient buildings and the world's largest surviving imperial palace complex.  It's the top tourist site in Beijing.
     It turned out to be excessive in all the ways I anticipated, starting with riding the subway in crushing crowd next to a threesome of rumpled, smoky travelers with lumpy gear that added to the crush.  I am so not-Chinese, I kept thinking....I don't see how I could ever get used to this....  That was the low point, though, right at the beginning, and my experience got better and better as the day went on.

     Forbidden City was so-named because no ordinary person, was allowed inside for 500 years.  Construction of the palace started about 600 years ago during the Ming dynasty and later became the home of the Qing emperors until 1924.  Most people enter through the Gate of Heavenly Peace, Tian'anmen, the image of Mao looking out at the throngs, which is on the far left underneath the two-eaved rooftop by the red flags.  It was from this gate that Mao declared the new People's Republic of China on October 1, 1949.  This gate looks out over Tiananmen Square across and to the right of the broad walkway you see here and 12 lanes of traffic to the right of the white barrier.  Straight, flat and wide--this Beijing walkway and road scene struck me as the exact opposite of what we've gotten used to in Hong Kong.

     This photo is taken from the Gate of Supreme Harmony.  It looks out toward the Hall of Supreme Harmony, the largest and most important of the buildings in the imperial complex, which was used for ceremonial occasions.  The expansive courtyard between the gate and the hall supposedly could hold an audience of 100,000.
     The Chinese emperor considered himself the son of Heaven, so everything in the imperial palace needed to reflect his vaulted status and that's why mere mortals were not allowed to set foot inside the complex.

     This is a 250-ton marble carriage path carved with images of dragons and clouds, which was originally dragged into Beijing on ice.  The emperor was carried in his sedan chair into the Three Great Halls on this path--the Halls of Supreme Harmony (mentioned above), the Hall of Middle Harmony and pictured here, the Hall of Preserving Harmony.
















   

     My favorite part of the complex was the Imperial Gardens.  I can imagine that the Chinese royalty enjoyed the respite there from the weighty hugeness and elaborateness of the palace much more than I did.   Located in the eastern part of the gardens was this bed of spring-flowering yellow, pink and white trees, quite beautiful.  For the Chinese, East traditionally is associated with springtime, so this was an appropriate place to end my visit to Forbidden City on a fine spring day.















   

A Good Morning from Beijing

     It's Monday morning and we have a view from our 14th-floor hotel room, not to be taken for granted in Beijing.  On a bad air day the buildings in the upper third of the photo wouldn't be visible.  The forecast today is for a high in the upper 60's, so people shouldn't have to burn coal to keep warm and that bodes well for the air later.
     Terry is attending a conference here today and tomorrow.  We arrived last night, took the convenient Airport Express train as far as we could, and then had only a 15-minute walk to our hotel in the Chaoyang district.  If someone had been watching me walk that half-mile or so, it would probably have been obvious that I'm not a China veteran.  I am not able to roll my bag over a plop of spittle if I can help it.
     When we went out later to a grocery store to buy water, we checked out the Chinese version of a deli-case.  There were a couple dozen big crockery bowls of various regional pickled vegetables and sliced roots, some appealing and others not so much.  I would have missed the silkworm pupae, had Terry not pointed them out.    
     All along the sidewalk vendors displayed jewelry, cell phone cases, stylish glasses frames, stuffed toys and all kinds of other stuff that no one was stopping to look at, much less buy, which made me wonder if sidewalk vending on Sunday night has some purpose other than sales--maybe better than staying home in a crowded apartment with disagreeable family or roommates?
     One very informal sidewalk restaurant had several rows of tables:  low plastic stools scattered on either side of a trough made of bent sheet metal.  A group of young people sat down and the vendor brought over a scoop of glowing homemade charcoal to dump in the trough.  They warmed their hands, laughing and talking, while they waited for small skewers of meat to go on the coals, a relaxed Sunday night scene.

The Robot Building

     Yesterday when I was subbing in an art class, one of the students was working on a project bending 5' lengths of aluminum wire into models of buildings.  We chatted about his work and also about a few famous buildings on Hong Kong Island, including the HSBC building, formerly the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, pictured at right.  It's nicknamed The Robot Building by some Hong Kongers.  The student said that this building could be taken apart and reassembled--like a robot, I suppose--which was new information to me.  After I got home I went online to check this out.  He was right.  The building was completed in 1985 when there was a lot of uncertainty about the future of Hong Kong, due to be handed over to China in 1997.  Just in case things did not go well with the handover, it was constructed from 5 prefab modules that could be disassembled and moved.
     The building has a couple unique features related to conservation.  It makes extensive use of natural light, and it was built to use seawater rather than fresh water for the cooling system.  The price tag was not conservative, however.  At the time of construction it was the world's most expensive building, costing $U.S. 668 million.

     Lions traditionally have been  placed outside building entrances in Hong Kong to keep away evil spirits. Standing guard outside the HSBC building are two bronze lions, which were commissioned in 1935 for the earlier Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank that stood on the site.  They're named Stephen and Stitt, after two former bank managers.  Supposedly the personalities of these managers is reflected in the bronze statues:  one roaring and one calm.  For decades people have come by to touch the lions' paws and noses, hoping that power and fortune will rub off on them.
     The photo shows Stephen's war wounds.  He took quite a few hits when the Japanese occupied Hong Kong during WWII and actually had a piece of unexploded ordnance lodged inside that had to be taken out by an explosives removal team.

     Occupy Wall Street has been camped in the public space underneath the HSBC building since last fall.  Their informal quarters are quite a contrast to the buttoned-down all-business atmosphere in this part of Hong Kong Island.  They've been more or less tolerated, although I've read the usual op-ed pieces about the protestors needing to go out and get jobs.  Supposedly most of them are either students or have jobs, though, and from the lack of occupation when I took this afternoon photo a few weeks ago, that seems a reasonable assumption.
     Besides disrupting business as usual, the protesters here may also hope to disrupt the feng shui of the site.  Geomancers consider the HSBC building to have a very favorable location.  There's a clear view of water, Victoria Harbor in this case, which is supposed to bring prosperity.  There's also what's called a dragon's gate, an open space at ground level under the building that allows the dragon to descend Victoria Peak and whoosh underneath the building and fly out over the water.  As it is right now, the dragon coming down off the mountain will get tangled up in the banners and tents of the Occupy Wall Streeters.

Shanghai Museum Object

     OK, you get 3 guesses.  What exactly is this piece from the Shanghai Museum ?  A garden ornament?  A lidded box?  A seat?
     It's ceramic.  It's about 800 years old from the Jin dynasty.  It (supposedly) would help you get a good night's rest.  You'd put your head on the writing.  Yes, this is a pillow, one that redefines the notion of firmness.  It was thought that a soft pillow would make you soft and sap your energy.  Even young children slept on a pillow made of wood or ceramic because a Chinese mother wanted the back of her child's head to be flat, which was considered attractive.
     Other possible reasons for sleeping on a very hard pillow were that nerves would be numbed resulting in the sleeper being sedated, or that the sleeper's elaborate hairstyle wouldn't be disturbed.  One scholar contended that sleeping on a hard pillow improved a person's eyesight.
     Sometimes there was a hole in one of these ceramic pillows where hot or cool water could be poured into it to keep the sleeper comfortable in winter or summer weather, a practice still used today in some rural areas of China.  Medicinal herbs or aromatics could be added to this water.

     Wooden or bamboo pillows were used over 2000 years ago.  Ceramic pillows were favored by those with more economic means, first appearing during the Tang dynasty 1400 years ago.   Some had very elaborate designs and inscriptions, meant to both ward off evil spirits during the night and also to imbue the sleeper with favorable qualities.  A design of a carp, for example, was meant to give the sleeper strength and determination, because this fish was admired for swimming upstream against the current.  The pillow at left from the Song dynasty about 1000 years ago features a lotus bouquet.  The lotus symbolizes purity.
     My cushiony pillow in a white case seems rather plain and uninteresting compared to the dozen or so ceramic ones that I saw in the Shanghai Museum a couple weeks ago.  How have I survived all these years without a ceramic pillow, without the extra energy, the comfort of hot and cool water, and the benefits of having the likes of carps and lotuses under my head all night?

Plum Blossoms

     In honor of the first day of spring, here is a blossoming plum tree I photographed in Shaoxing a couple weeks ago.  Week after week around the Chinese New Year season last year in Shenzhen, I walked by the artificial blooming plum trees that decorated the entrance to our apartment complex.  So I was thrilled to finally see the real thing.
     Actually I have seen plum blossoms many times before, white ones on the wild plum trees around Walnut Grove where I grew up (the setting of On the Banks of Plum Creek, of course!)  Their fragrance is one of my favorites.
     Pink plum blossoms like those in the photo are often used for Chinese New Year, which is also called Spring Festival.  They are very symbolic, as so many elements of nature are for the Chinese:  they represent hope and rebirth.
     Plum blossoms are also considered one of the "four gentleman", or men of virtue, in Chinese culture, along with orchids, bamboo and chrysanthemums.  Plum blossoms represent strength and endurance, because they are one of the first flowers to bloom in the spring, often while snow is still on the ground.  The other virtues represented are purity (orchid), uprightness (bamboo) and humility (chrysanthemum).
     Plum blossoms have been the subject of many Chinese poems and paintings since ancient times.  They are considered by many to be the national flower of China.
    
    

A Day in the Life of...

     I subbed today in a technology class, where one group of middle schoolers was working on a photo story assignment about a day in the life of someone or something.  Several of the kids were doing stories about their pets.  A couple of the more creative boys were depicting a day in the life of their backpack and an old p.c.
     One girl was interviewing and photographing their family's amah (household helper) and driver to show what they do on their day off--great idea.   I recently read a description of a colonial Hong Konger treating his Chinese household help "like vapor".  Middle school is a good time for these privileged kids to have their perceptions shaken up a bit through a project like this.
     As I was circulating in the room and looking over shoulders, a Google Earth image on a screen caught my eye:  big clumps of green vegetation and trees, winding carpets of flat fields, a building here and there...this was definitely not Hong Kong.  I asked the girl who was navigating around this green scene if it was part of her project.  Yes, she said, this is where she spends her summers in the U.K.  Her father is an earl, she said, and she zoomed in and showed me the boundaries of his estate, his house and so on.
     She took me on a virtual drive down the road that she and her cousins ride their motorbikes on to do their chores, such as feeding the pheasants and going into the nearest village to buy butter and milk at the dairy.  Is that a cattle grate?  I asked, looking at the grid that appeared in the road as she went through a gate.  Yes, she said, her uncle had about 150 cattle on his land in the summertime.  She showed me a lake where neighborhood people paid her uncle to come and fish in the summertime and where they could ice skate in the winter.  A little further down the road was the village, with aging dark red brick houses.  Some of them used to have thatched roofs, she said, but they're too expensive anymore.  Prominent in the village was a huge gray stone church, where she said her parents were married.  Above a low wall surrounding the church, reclining against a grassy slope, was a side-by-side line of old headstones.  These used to be sunken into the ground all over the church yard, she said.  I asked if she had any relatives buried there.  No, she said, my grandpa is buried right here, and navigated out into the countryside to an open spot between some trees.  I pointed to another open spot nearby, a big gray square near a house and some outbuildings.  That's where the stables used to be, she said.  Now we just use motorbikes.
     A summertime day in the life of the earl's niece sounds like a pleasant respite from spending the school year in Hong Kong.

This will make you smile.

     Yi...er...san...qie zi !
     Translated from Mandarin that's "one...two...three...eggplant!"
     Huh?  Well, if you want to get your Chinese friends to smile when you're about to take their picture, this is what you have them say.  Qie zi is approximately pronounced "cheeuh  zi".
     This was one bit of Mandarin that teacher Sam in Nanjing taught us.

Dinner with Sam in Nanjing

     Last Saturday night in Nanjing we had dinner with Sam, a young American who's in his third year teaching English at the university there.  Sam's uncle had met Terry at a conference and urged him to contact his nephew.  Terry did, email exchanges followed, and finally we had a chance to meet and have dinner together.  Sam suggested walking to a restaurant near our hotel that has a reputation for serving great Nanjing food.  This was a place we most likely would not have chosen on our own--it was huge, kind of kitschy, riotously loud, and there was a wait for a table--but we ended up having a great time hanging out with noisy noshing Nanjingers and talking with Sam.
     Actually, if Terry and I had gone there on our own, we'd probably still be waiting for a table.  Apparently you didn't just take a number and wait to be called.  Way too passively Western.  Every few minutes Sam was shouting at the host from our perch in the waiting area, just like others who wanted a table, and Mr. Host would shout back.  Occasionally he'd go over and stand right next to Mr. H, gesture at the numbers on the list and shout some more.  All of this was in Mandarin, of course, and all in good fun.
     The restaurant was a great big open hall, where hundreds of eaters sat on short benches around heavy wooden tables.  Sam consulted with us and then ordered some tasty dishes.  New ones for us were a delicious vegetable that looked like a plate of parsley stems, a pork and vegetable dish in a savory brown sauce with black beans and "tofu" made from rice, and sliced lotus root in pomegranate molasses sprinkled with sesame seeds, sweet enough to qualify for dessert (that's what's in the rectangular dish on the table above).
     Our dinner conversation was really enjoyable, surprisingly so, considering that everything had to be yelled over the din, in addition to overpowering the painfully loud entertainers, which was two women singing and playing traditional instruments.    Sam is from the Boston area.  He graduated with a psychology degree, plus came away with a clutch of philosophy and Asian studies classes and 3 years of Mandarin.  One of his Chinese professors had connections at Nanjing University and that's what led Sam to his job. He was originally going to stay only a year, but liked his job and the city so much he's been there nearly 3 years and plans to stay another.
     When he arrived in Nanjing Sam said his 3 years of Mandarin in college just barely were enough to actually communicate, but he's obviously worked at developing his language skills.  One regret, he said, is that his spoken Mandarin is now nonstandard--he speaks with a Nanjing accent.  Provincial accents often make communication difficult or even impossible between ordinary Chinese from different parts of the country.  Sam said it was really disheartening to visit Cantonese-speaking Hong Kong over his Chinese New Year break and find that his hard-won Mandarin was useless in most places here.
     When asked what surprised him most about living in Nanjing, he said that people are friendlier and more helpful than he expected.  Most Chinese people he's met regard Americans favorably, he said, perhaps because they're perceived as having an enviable standard of living.  Are his students bothered by  the environmental degradation in China that's resulted from rapid industrialization these last 30 years?  They are to some degree, Sam said, but mostly they're concerned about getting a good job and making enough money to live comfortably.  I would say that's probably what the majority of U.S. college students are mostly thinking about, too.
     Sam's a good teacher:  before we parted, he wrote out the information we needed to find our train back to Shanghai the next day and then insisted that we practice saying "gao tie", bullet train, exaggerating the vowels and tones and having us repeat it a few times.  He gave us some good tips for doing some sightseeing in Nanjing the next day, too.
     We enjoyed hearing about another expat's experiences and observations.  It will be interesting to see how Sam's experience in China plays into his next moves once he goes back to the U.S.

Scenes from Nanjing's Xuanwu Lake Park

    

     Performance writing?  A story?  Poem? Opinion?  To whom it may concern?  This was one of those times when I wished that I could read Mandarin.  Just inside the gate we saw several sidewalk calligraphers like this one, writing with a pointed sponge on a stick.  Some used an upside-down soda bottle taped above the sponge for a slow drip, so they didn't need to re-dip their pen in a bucket.

     Here's something worth exporting to the U.S.  If guerilla graffiti-ists in the U.S.  could be convinced to ditch their spray paint and do their thing in public, in daylight, with water like these calligraphers, they'd maybe get more of the attention they crave--evaporating water, ephemeral art...a sort of scarcity creating demand.  Each of the sidewalk calligraphers had an interested audience, even a couple of illiterates who came from afar.

     Another city, another morning, another group of groovin' young-at-heart women on a plaza doing their synchronized dances to a CD playing on a boombox somewhere nearby. It's exercise.  It's social.  They're having fun.
     I had fun watching this woman.  She was dressed up, made up, and seemed to enjoy being out front.  Still she seemed self-absorbed, a little of that single-minded focus again.

Further on we were treated to some live music on traditional instruments.  This group of girls was rehearsing under what looked like their mothers' direction.  The girl on the far left created some rather pleasing music on her pipes.  The girl on the right...well, maybe we just didn't stay long enough to appreciate how beautiful that tinny horn could sound once its player got warmed up.

    

     This was an especially pretty part of the walk for someone like me who likes evergreens. The Ming city wall was to our right, just as it was the whole time we walked in the park.  We were headed toward Zijin Shan, "Purple-Gold Mountain", which is in the center background.

     Zijin Mountain is a much-visited area in Nanjing.  Among the sites of interest there are the Sun Yatsen Mauseleum, a 14th-centruy Ming emperor's tomb, botanical gardens and an observatory.

     Here's an enterprising fellow with two  China-sized bags of some kind of extruded snack that he was scooping out and selling in much smaller bags to Sunday walkers who were making the trek up Zijin.  

     We walked only as far as the cable car that went to the top of the mountain.  Maybe if we'd bought a bag of this stuff to eat we'd have been able to walk faster so we'd have had time to walk up the path that runs under the cable car to the top.  As it was, our time for exploring was running out and we needed to head back down.

     We stopped and bought a couple of warm sweet potatoes from this vendor, and then nipped into a small grocery store a little further on for a can of Japanese mackerel.  That made a Kathy-and-Terry-style fast food lunch back in our hotel room, before we set out for the train station to go back to Shanghai.

     We didn't have enough time in Nanjing, but the bullet train should make it easy enough to return someday.

Nanjing's Ming Wall

     Last Saturday night we stayed in Nanjing, only a few blocks from beautiful Xuanwu Lake Park.  Sunday morning we went through this entrance to the park, the Xuanwu Gate, and took a long walk.

     Nanjing is famous for its city wall, built around 650 years ago by the first emperor of the Ming dynasty, who made Nanjing his capital.  You can see a portion of the wall to the left of the gate.

     

     Originally measuring over 33 km, this is the longest city wall ever built in the world.  An impressive 22 km of the wall remain standing today, winding and wandering its way around Nanjing's natural features.  Other Chinese cities built imposing city walls, but most have been destroyed.   

     I was impressed by all of the mature trees in this park.  Trees seem hard to come by in many areas of China.  The lower portions of the trunks are painted white to make them more visible at night.  I presume this is to protect the tree from a person or vehicle, not the other way around

     It took 20 years for 200,000 workers to build this wall in the late 1300's.  Its average height is around 40' and its average width at the top is around 20'.  

     Bricks used for construction of the wall came from 5 different provinces.  Each brick was stamped with information specifying the place and person who made it, to help insure good workmanship.  The less visible characters on the lower brick in the photo seem more like this could possibly be a 650-year-old stamp.  That's some new-looking mortar between the bricks--there's obviously been some reconstruction of the wall in places.

     Looking at the writing on these bricks gives me pause.  650 years ago my European peasant ancestors were probably just barely eking out enough food to survive and were centuries away from becoming literate.  

We thought that last train trip was fast...

     On Sunday afternoon we got seats on another bullet train to return to Shanghai from Nanjing.  This time it was a nonstop, so the 190-mile trip took only 65 minutes.  Not only did we shave off almost a third of the trip time compared to a day earlier, the ticket cost about $21, a dollar less than we'd paid Saturday for the 110-minute trip to Nanjing.
     Check out the nice queue in the photo at right.  So much for the Chinese reputation for mobbing instead of lining up.  The train you see here is at the next platform over.  We were waiting with these people for the G15, which arrived a few minutes late.  It stopped for only a few minutes, but that's all it took for everyone to board the 8 cars.

     Terry's first comment when we arrived at this huge new train station in Nanjing was that it was good to see a little effort put into its architecture.  I couldn't get my camera out fast enough when we approached it in a taxi, so you'll have to take my word that it was impressive (or you can google Nanjing South Railway Station and find a picture online).  The photo looking out the windows at left is in the passenger waiting area on the second level.  You can see some of the column detail repeated in the platform area in the photo above.

     Once on our way, I was glued to the scenery out the window most of the way to Shanghai.  Just outside Nanjing were some low mountains and a few quarries.  As the mountains gave way to hills Terry pointed out the plots of low, round tea bushes.  When the land became flat there were lots of small farming plots, rectangular fish ponds, long white plastic tunnels for growing vegetables, orchards, and occasional burial plots.  We also saw coal plants, brick factories and innumerable other small and large factories, power lines and more power lines, and thousands upon thousands of homes clustered together in villages, many quite new-looking and some looking a little forlorn.
  

    Once we arrived at Hongqiao Rail Station in Shanghai we had to wait 20 minutes in a line that was over a block long to get a taxi.  Then it took the taxi 45 minutes to get to Pudong airport (and that was in free-flowing Sunday afternoon traffic).  So it was a little frustrating to take as much time to get across the city from the train to the plane as it took to travel almost 200 miles from Nanjing to Shanghai.

Train to Nanjing

      We made it from Shanghai to Nanjing with ease.  Terry has taken the train between various Chinese cities a few times, though he's always had a Chinese colleague escort.  This was my first inter-city trip on a Chinese train. The hotel concierge in Shanghai had written out a few characters on a card with the information we'd need to buy our tickets, telling us that the ticket agent at the Hongqiao train station would speak only Mandarin.   Nice surprise:  once we figured out which ticket line to stand in (with the help of a couple of friendly English-speaking Chinese travelers) and we made our way up to the window, we discovered that the agent did indeed speak English.  We got our tickets without a hitch, 140 RMB (about $22) each for our one-way tickets.  There was lots of signage in English around the station, and there was an English version of every announcement on the train--perfect syntax, no accent.  In addition, I was very pleased that the auto-flush toilets in the station, squat-style as usual here, were nearly clean and nearly odorless, not at all taken for granted in China!  We Americans felt very accommodated.  

     The Shanghai Hongqiao station is the largest train station in Asia.  The waiting area is supposed to accommodate 10,000 passengers.  I would definitely not want to be here when people are traveling for Chinese New Year, as the crowds and pushing would be overwhelming.  The station opened only 1 1/2 years ago, at the same time that the high-speed train began the run between Shanghai and Nanjing.  This was just before  Expo 2010 opened in Shanghai, when the city made a huge effort to help visitors feel welcome.

     The train left exactly on time and arrived in Nanjing in just under 2 hours, after making 7 stops in small cities on the way.  There was a digital display in front of the car showing the train speed, which we saw top out at 304 kilometers/hour or 189 mph, made possible by the rails being elevated on huge concrete pylons much of the way.  There were 8 cars making the trip and if all the cars were like ours, most of the seats were full.  As people got off the train along the way, new passengers would board to take their places.  The speed and efficiency of the system was impressive.  

     Some people in the U.S. wonder why we can't build a train system like this.  It seems to me that in order for such a system to be economically feasible in our country, you'd need to have cities with hundreds and hundreds of high-rise apartments instead of single-family homes with yards, and between the cities you need to have 4- or 5-story multiple-family homes clustered together with very limited open areas of uninhabited space between the housing clusters—what we saw outside the train window today.  China seems to have the population density to make such a train system practical.  Even if it wasn't practical, the central government in China can just decide that the system will be built, whether or not it makes economic sense.  

     We've been cooling our heels late this afternoon, waiting to meet a young contact of Terry's here in Nanjing for dinner after he finishes teaching at 5:30.  We're on the 25th floor of our hotel and we can see the Zijin Mountain area as well as a portion of the famous Ming dynasty city wall, where we'll do some exploring tomorrow.

  

Trip to Shaoxing

     Thursday after Terry finished a day of training with a group of 15 in Shanghai, I tagged along with them in the 3-vehicle caravan to the city of Shaoxing, about 3 hours southwest of Shanghai.  In the van I chatted with a couple young fellows from Qingdao, a coastal city north of Shanghai, who told me all about the charms of their city:  mountains, ocean, fresh air, great seafood, a cherry festival, and German architecture.  Qingdao was under German rule for 99 years after it was ceded to Germany in 1898 following the murder of 2 German missionaries. Only a few years after taking over the city, the Germans started brewing Tsingtao beer, the ubiquitous brand here in China.  I'd read about this unique city, and their descriptions further convinced me that this would be an interesting city to visit someday.  They also asked me what I thought of Obama and the U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.

     After we arrived at our hotel, the group gathered in a private dining room around two large round tables and the wait staff filled our goblets with a special Chinese beverage, warm and thick corn juice.  We enjoyed a dinner of all sorts of very Chinese dishes:  pickled vegetables, cold duck tongue, cold shrimp, marinated dates,  fried fish, poached fish with vegetables, stewed fish bladder, crab with cabbage and onions, chewy beef short ribs in a brown sauce with onions, marinated dates, marinated tofu, stinky tofu (that's what it's really called in English), 2 kinds of dumplings, broccoli, rolls of deep-fried duck skin, a savory dark vegetable soup with duck liver, a potato and dark ruffly mushroom soup, chicken soup with bok choy, a tofu soup with large tubular chunks of a very fibery green stem, and a sweet soup with egg and marble-sized tapioca pearls.
     Have I mentioned that the Chinese enjoy eating?  The communal aspect is as much a source of pleasure as the food itself. Above is part of the group at our table.  There was much laughter and friendly ribbing at our table, and some of it translated for Terry and me, and some not, which was fine at least for me so that I could focus on all these new tastes.  I think that I tried everything.  The one thing that I really did not care for at all was the stinky tofu.  I can't compare it to anything I've ever eaten.  It tasted like a very specific smell on a farm that I have always disliked.  When I mentioned this to Terry, he laughed and said that was exactly his first impression, too, but that he's come to like it.  Another of those acquired tastes, one that I think I may not ever acquire which will leave more of it for the Chinese to enjoy.

     Today Terry and his group spent the day at a mattress factory just outside Shaoxing, applying the energy efficiency training from yesterday, a very full and worthwhile day.  Terry says that this is just about the most satisfying part of his many-faceted job:  training and working with these smart, well-educated and diligent young Chinese.  They want to learn from him, and they're very eager to help make things work better in their country.

     I spent my day wandering around Shaoxing, which was an ancient capital.  It's picturesque in the old parts and famous for its canals and arched bridges.  I saw several women down close to canals in several places, washing clothes murky water like this.
     Although Chinese people like to visit this city, not so many Anglos do, especially now in the chilly early spring off-season.  Besides Terry, during all my walking around during day day I saw exactly one other Anglo, a businessman-sort in the hotel in the morning.

      Across the street from our hotel was Fushan Hill, where I spent an hour or two wandering up and down stairs and pathways through beautiful quiet forest.  A thousand years ago during the Song dynasty there were dozens of pavilions, towers, halls and gardens on the hill.  Nowadays there are remains or reconstructions of 10, such as this one.
     After spending so much time in polluted and congested Hong Kong, the relatively clean and cool air and the quiet on Fushan Hill was a pleasant change.  On the van ride back to Shanghai Friday night the 2 Chinese with us said that they both noticed the calmer atmosphere in Shaoxing.  I noticed a number of people whistling Chinese music both in the park and on the streets, fun to hear.

     This bell was located on the high point of the hill next to Fei Yi Tower, which means "Suppressing the Enemy Wu"--a military watch tower during the Yue dynasty 2500 years ago.  These young guys rammed the red cloth-covered timber into the bell to ring it a couple times, maybe to warn the city about the Anglo invader with a camera.  

We're in Shanghai

     Terry and I arrived in Shanghai tonight.  He'll be doing an energy efficiency assessment training with a corporate group tomorrow.  Late tomorrow afternoon they'll all be bussing a few hours to Shaoxing, where they'll do an assessment at a factory on Friday.  I'm pleased that I'll get to go along with the group to Shaoxing, too.  This will be my first opportunity to travel outside a Chinese city.

Bamboo

    

     Construction is going on all around us, due to the subway line that's being extended out to our neighborhood on the west side of Hong Kong Island.  A few buildings are being renovated.  Old ones are being torn down and replaced.  About "old":  Hong Kongers' idea of old housing is different than ours.  Someone I recently met said she lived in a very old apartment, built 36 years ago.  Our 65-year-old house in Minneapolis seems ancient to them.
     Walk down most any block and you'll walk under or around scaffolding like this, always made of bamboo.  Bamboo is widely used in Asia because it's plentiful and thus economical, and it's strong, lightweight, flexible, and versatile.  It's highly renewable, too.  Bamboo is not a tree, it's a woody grass, one of the fastest growing plants in the world.  Many species mature within 3-5 years. It grows from a rhizome, so it easily regenerates after it's been cut, and its extensive root systems help prevent soil erosion.  Bamboo has been used since ancient times in China for food, clothing, buildings, household implements, weapons, papermaking, musical instruments and medicine.
     What's most striking about bamboo in Hong Kong is seeing this low-tech material used since ancient times being used in the 21st century as scaffolding on some of the sleekest, most modern buildings in the world in the Central business district.

     Here's another incongruity.  This delivery guy was ahead of me on a walkway over a busy road in Central.  He was headed into the swanky IFC mall, carrying his goods the way they've been carried for many centuries in China, on a notched shoulder pole made of--you guessed it--bamboo.  You can see the flexibility of the bamboo here.

"Waking of the Insects" Holiday

     Today was Jingzhe, a lunar holiday in the Chinese calendar.  According to traditional folklore, this is the day that insects wake up from hibernation and the mythical white tiger is out looking for prey, so people perform a ritual to appease the tiger.  Somehow appeasing the tiger got connected with the "beating the petty person" ritual, also called the "villain hitting" ritual, which I mentioned in my Feb. 11 post.  Most likely this became a two-for-one deal:  I could get rid of the negativity caused by an enemy by feeding the enemy to the tiger, and by doing this I'd placate the tiger so it would leave me alone.

     The first indication that something was going on today was when I ran into 3 groups of women on the Belcher's Street sidewalk about a block from out apartment, like those at the right.  They were sitting on low stools with a very curious assortment of stuff:  canisters with burning paper, burning joss sticks, makeshift cardboard altars, baskets of eggs and oranges, and some small yellow paper cut-outs of a fierce looking beast that sort of stood up.  Most curiously, a piece of what looked like raw chicken sat on top of some of the paper beasts.  After I got home I read online about Jingzhe, the paper tigers that are used in the rituals, and the salt pork that's used to feed the tigers.

     Late this afternoon I got off the tram close to the Canal Street flyover and walked through the underpass area where the elderly women who are the professional petty person beaters sit on their stools and beat a paper cutout of your enemy with a shoe.  (The woman in the center of this photo is holding a red shoe in her right hand.) The stools were full of customers today, the shoes were beating paper fast and furious, there were paper tigers all over and some meat for them, too, joss sticks and paper were burning at all the beating stations, and clients were handing over bills to the beaters for their services. I read that the standard fee to have a ritual performed on your enemy is $HK50, or about $6.50, and that this is a huge money-making day for the pros.  There were hoards of people milling around this spectacle and a few police were wisely stationed here, as well.  Because the air was very unpleasantly smoky and I didn't especially like hanging out with this crowd,  I didn't stick around long enough to watch a client getting the full ritual from beginning to end.  If I had, maybe I'd understand better how all of these parts of Jingzhe and villain beating fit together. (Where do the waking insects come into all of this, anyway?)
     The Jingzhe ritual used to be observed in the Pearl River delta region of southern China until the Communist takeover in 1949.  Now it's mostly just found in Hong Kong.
     I would say that it's a fair generalization that most Hong Kongers think that this is a more sophisticated place than anywhere in mainland China. If you were visiting Hong Kong today on Jingzhe, however, you might question that presumption.

Out for Hot Pot

     Last night Terry and I ventured out of our plain folks' part of the city, taking a taxi  halfway up Victoria Peak to the Mid-Levels.  We'd been invited for hot pot at the spacious and lovely apartment of a gregarious American business acquaintance of Terry's and his Chinese-American wife.  Our hosts did a great job introducing us to hot pot-- Chinese fondue--which is popular here during the winter months.
      Before we sat down, we were instructed to pick up the bowl at our place, step over to a side table, and put together our personal dipping sauce for all the things we'd be cooking.  "With hot pot it's all about the sauce," Jim said, "and if you don't like your meal tonight, it'll be your own fault!"  So we each concocted combinations of various jarred chilies, chili oil, sesame oil, several kinds of Chinese barbecue sauce and, unbelievably, Skippy peanut butter, the supposed secret to a great hot pot sauce, according to Jim.  Terry also broke one of the fresh quail eggs into his sauce, a Taiwanese touch we were told.  (Quite a delicious addition, he said.)
     Terry's business partner and his wife were part of the group, as well, which made 6 of us sitting around the table with 2 steaming hot pots of seasoned chicken broth.  On each end of the table was a heaped tray of fresh vegetables:  chinese cabbage, choy, several kinds of mushrooms, daikon radish, fresh water chestnuts (what a treat) and lotus root.  There were also platters of very thin strips of sliced beef, lamb and chicken, and bowls of scallops, prawns and tofu.   We each had 2 sets of chopsticks, a wooden set for putting food into the hot pot and removing it, and another lacquered set for eating.  I made the mistake of putting my first strip of beef on my plate before putting it in the pot, which prompted the hosts to clarify that raw food was to go directly in the pot, only cooked food should go on our plates (yoo hoo...a little common sense, Kathy...).  At that point someone told the story of a friend who contracted an infection from contaminated hot pot food and nearly had to have a liver transplant.  After hearing that, I spent a few minutes focused a little anxiously on the area on my plate where the raw beef had been, hoping that the juice from some hot vegetables would soon de-contaminate it.
     We had a delicious time of it, dropping ingredients into the pots, stirring, retrieving, and dipping away in our sauces.  The pickled accompaniments on the table were tasty, too, mostly Japanese pickled vegetables we were told, one dark green finely ground one with sesame seeds, another that was chunks of radish, and my favorite, burdock root.  There was also a dish of sliced yellow pickles that the hosts said their family called puo puo, so-named for the person who made them--this is "grandmother" in Cantonese.
     Dinner conversation was wide-ranging and interesting.  Someone had ribbed the host about his collection of books about bananas, so that story had to be told; the host had lived in Nicaragua and had done his thesis on how the political situation changed the banana market there.  Terry's business partner and his wife came from South Africa for jobs in Hong Kong 20 years ago, just before the first democratic election when the African National Congress came into power.  He's an Afrikaner who went to boarding school and was quite naughty, according to his wife, though we only heard about the time he "borrowed" the headmaster's car.  His wife's father ran away from home in New Zealand at age 14 and jumped on a ship, not knowing that it was headed for South Africa, where he ended up working 16 hours a day to put himself through school and eventually starting a business.  The host's Chinese-American wife commented on her mother's distaste for religion because most Chinese religion is focused on getting something--success, good fortune, riches and the like.  The other 2 couples both are busy with their young kids, especially getting them to soccer and rugby practice.  Playing fields are in short supply in Hong Kong, which adds more complicating factors to the shuttling.  The hosts said that their daughter practices south of here on the old Stanley Fort grounds, the former British barracks.  The Chinese People's Liberation Army has been housed at Stanley Fort since the handover to China in 1997.  Lately there's been concern about security, so every vehicle arriving for soccer practice has been stopped and searched by the PLA before being allowed to enter the grounds.
     All in all, it was a much more lively Saturday night than usual for us.  And my liver is feeling fine so far, thank you.  Here, I'll slap it a few times for good measure...

Saturday Solicitors Across from the Library

     The 2 women in this photo are part of a veritable army of smiling Saturday street solicitors you see collecting money for various charities all over Hong Kong.  Their particular cause is the Hong Kong Southern District Women's Association United, a social welfare organization.  The woman in the middle held her shoulder bag out and indicated where I should put money in the slot, which cued the woman on the left in the photo to apply the small yellow "I gave" sticker to my jacket.  Then I took this picture of the next donator right behind me. Saturday seems to be the big day for these solicitors, probably trying to catch shoppers who've just made a purchase and want to get rid of the thick, heavy $HK5 and $HK10 coins that people would just as soon get out of their pockets.  Many people stop and slip at least $HK1 into the money pouches.  There seems to be a strong presence of community service organizations here in Hong Kong, possibly a British influence.  To my understanding, in traditional Chinese culture people care for each other through family and friends, not through community organizations that serve people they don't know.
     I ran into these women right across the street from our neighborhood library, located on the 3rd floor of a newish community building that also houses a "sports center" with volleyball, badminton and squash courts, as well as a fitness center.   Rose, whom I met 10 days ago at a group lunch, thought that I should learn how to get to the local library, so she took me there this morning, pointed out the English language newspapers and books, and then took me to the desk to get a couple forms to fill out once I get my Hong Kong identity card so that I can get a library card and check out books.  Well--OK then!
     Rose herself goes to the library most mornings, she said, and she spends time every afternoon tutoring her primary school-age niece.  She said that one of the reasons she likes to spend this time with her niece is that she thinks that both the school and the girl's mother take too serious an approach to learning for such a young child, and she's trying to put more fun into it.  Rose told me that she formerly was a social worker, specializing in elder care, but she retired early because the stress of the job took its toll on her health.  She criticized the Hong Kong government for underfunding programs for the elderly, mentioning for example, that the government encourages elderly people to live independently and to access home nurse services for health needs, but that 200 is the normal impossible caseload for such a nurse.
     While touring the library we spent some time looking out the huge windows on the hill side of the building.  Rose showed me the new Kennedy Town subway terminal being constructed right next to the community building (2 1/2 years until it's done), she pointed out the 2 public housing high-rises in the neighborhood where a single elderly person can rent an apartment for $HK2000/month ($260), and she gestured toward the Hong Kong University campus up the hill.  I'd read about the Fung Ping Shan history museum at HKU and asked her about it.  She said I'd like it, and we made plans to go there week after next.