The Yangtze River

The Yangtze River

The boat, at last! We were greeted by a female brass quartet playing “Yankee Doodle” and “Jingle Bells.”

We had to walk down all these steps to get to the river:

The ship was built in Germany for Russia. When we visited the Captain and crew on the bridge, we saw equipment labeled in Chinese and Russian:


All the employees on the river boat do double and triple duty. For example, the
lovely lady in the beauty salon who does hair and facials also played the saxophone in the quartet that greeted us when we boarded the ship. She also danced in various Chinese ethnic dances in two nighttime crew shows. The women crew also modeled traditional Chinese clothing. The ship photographer also danced in the show. Some of the performers were cooks and waitresses. They were fantastic; professional and entertaining. Our guide sang Karaoke and he had a spectacular voice.






The first day, a Chinese doctor gave a talk on acupuncture, acupressure, and reflexology. A few lucky people of the 200 passengers on the boat participated in free demonstrations of these, including a facial. I got a natural facial from all edible products from the saxophone player/dancer/cosmetologist Alice.

Here's the itty bitty bathroom/toilet/shower/sink in the cabin. That stupid orange shower curtain kept wrapping around my body. If you forgot to turn off the shower when you went to wash your hands, you got sprayed on the head.



The boat and many surrounding boats were fogged in for about 10 hours and nobody could continue on the river. We spent all day on the boat, waiting to get going. I went to an embroidery demonstration. The Chinese embroidery, on canvases and clothing is amazing. They split a piece of thread into 16-128 pieces. I saw a beautiful double-sided embroidered picture with an orange and white cat on one side with a black and white cat on the other side. There was another one with a tiger and a leopard on opposite sides. The amazing thing was that the thread from one side couldn’t be seen on the other side.

Going through the locks, a few boats at a time. It was narrow, but we squeezed in.



Once the fog lifted, we went through Xiling gorge and on to the Three Gorges Dam. We visited the Dam at night, all beautifully lit up.

Because of the Dam, the Yangtze River will rise to 175 meters (about 500 feet). If the people living on the river banks don’t sign a contract with the government to move, they’ll soon be under water. The older people miss Mao; the younger people love progress. The Dam displaced 1.25 million people. It also submerged archeological sites, 13 cities, 140 towns, and 1352 villages. The reservoir is the size of Singapore.

The boat took us through various gorges. A bilingual Chinese guide spoke about the gorges, their history, and what we were seeing, all day. It was a gorgeous day to sit on deck, listen to her and watch the scenery.





We went in 12-passenger “pea pod” boats through the Lesser Three Gorges. The rowers used to row naked, but now they’re clothed for the tourists. Would you want to see these guys naked?


Loading coal into a barge on the Yangtze River:



Farmers work on terraced layers, tending their crops on steep cliffs. They moved their ancestors’ tombs to the hillsides. We also saw cliff coffins in caves.

Wanjou is a small town of 500,000 people, consisting of 10,000 islands. People were paid $12,000 per person to relocate here from the flooded areas. Since 1997, the relocated farmers are now construction workers, building the high rises in the new cities.
A few newly built high-rises along the river. They sure changed the landscape of the area:





We visited a relocated family in their condo. Lotteries were held to determine which floor of the building their new condo would be on. They had to kill or sell their farm animals when moving to high rise buildings. In front of the condo building, we saw a list of births. Mao had advocated lots of children, but now, with the one-birth per family rule, neighbors help to keep track of only one birth per family. Children from a son are called “inner grandchildren.” Children from a daughter are called “outer grandchildren.” Sometimes the parents work in the city and send money back to the grandparents who are caring for the children.

This is the kitchen.

This is the list of births for the condo complex.
This is the relocation condo.


Who'd like to buy a LIVE chicken or duck for dinner? You can find it for sale right on the street.



We enjoyed the river cruise. The waitresses were so cute and pleasant. They learned our names and always said hi and bye, using everyone’s names. Service was impeccable. All our meals were buffets. Chinese desserts are tasteless, by the way. We are craving chocolate.

The cruise ended in Chongqing (pronounced Chongching), which is the largest city in the world: 33 million people. We disembarked and went to the Stilwell Museum (the American General in charge of American forces in China in WWII) and to the Flying Tiger Museum. We saw motorcycle repair shops in WWII bomb shelters. This man was painting flowers on rice paper:


Here's a couple of ladies who enjoyed seeing themselves on the viewing screen on my camera:



This is how the parents carried their children. There were no ergonomically-correct baby packs.



Next, we visited the PANDAS! A couple of panda bears escaped during the May 2008 earthquake. Two months later, they were found alive! Actually the 8.0 quake (death toll 90,000) was the first time that foreigners had helped China. The mountain people had never seen foreigners before. The panda bears were adorable. We took loads of pictures. We also saw red pandas which look like raccoons. I was hoping to buy some good panda bear souvenirs, but didn’t see anything special. Here's only 2 of about 30 panda pictures that I took.





Next stop…Xian and the Terra Cotta Army Warriors

Shanghai!

Shanghai!

After a 1 ½ hour flight from Beijing, we arrived in Shanghai. Our guide graciously ordered Big Macs from McDonalds for all of us because we didn’t have time for dinner before the Chinese acrobatic show. The Chinese LOVE McDonalds and KFC. We saw only a couple of Starbucks.





The snack on the plane looked like chocolate chip cookie dough balls. Yum! Uh, no, it ended being seaweed-coated nuts.

Our wonderful guide, Scottie, named himself after Scottie Pippin. He showed us his hand-drawn maps of Shanghai which he had colored with crayons himself. Shanghai has a population greater than Australia and has 1.8 million cars. The government controls the number of cars by limiting the number of license plates. They auction off license plates once a month for $5000-6000 a piece (normally $50).
Here's a guy loading down his scooter with groceries and supplies.

A mom and her daughter on a scooter; no helmet, no child-safety seat.


Want to take your dog for a ride? Just put him in the basket of your scooter:

China has 50% of the world’s cement, 35% of the world’s metal and steel. And 70% of the worlds building cranes. The scaffolding on the buildings is made of bamboo:



Just 16-17 years ago, Shanghai had 3 high rise buildings. Today they have 3000 and continue to build. A new condo, about $300,000 comes with unpaved floor, no appliances, and unpainted walls.

Shanghai’s International Flag Exhibition is actually laundry hanging outside all windows of the high rises. The outside of the buildings is covered in colorful laundry.



The acrobatic show at the Ritz Carlton was superb. The stunts and acts were amazing. After the show, we checked into our lovely hotel and caught the very end of the Chinese version of “Deal or No Deal” on TV.

Here's some acrobatic women balancing on chairs.



This first group of children born in the “one birth” policy are admittedly spoiled only children. They don’t know how to cook or clean and they do very little around the house. We asked one family who we visited who washes the dishes. They said that grandma washes and cleans up. The result of this one baby per family rule is 300 million less people since 1980. There are less American adoptions now due to a severe imbalance of the male-female ratio.

In the pre-1080’s there were very little indoor bathrooms. People used public bath houses. The Chinese have a saying, “The Americans shower every day and shop once a week. The Chinese shop every day and shower once a week. There are Eastern toilets and Western toilets. Here’s an Eastern toilet:


IF, and I mean IF toilet paper is supplied, it is in the main area of the bathroom, next to the sinks. And IF it is supplied, you use it to dry your hands after washing them, too. The 15 women in my group call ourselves the Sisterhood of the Western Toilet. Whoever hits the bathroom first checks out if there are an western toilets, which stall they are in, and then passes the word down to the rest of the women in line.

We passed by several IKEA stores on this trip. We went to the Shanghai Museum, to a silk rug factory and then to a Mongolian BBQ. After lunch, we went to the Jade Buddha Temple.



We had dinner at a restaurant which was also an art gallery of embroidered pictures. We didn’t know until we were in the bus on the way home that we could have bought them for 70% off. Everything is bartered here.

We walked along the famous Bund pier during the day and went on a boat ride on the Huang Po River at night to see the beautiful skyline. All the buildings were lit up in an array of moving colors. It was a gorgeous evening.




You know how we call our good dishes, “China.” They call theirs “porcelain.” Out of 1.3 billion people, only 30 million are in the Communist Party. They follow you and check on you for 2 years before you’re admitted to the party. You may not belong to any religion, if you want to be in the Communist Party.

The Chinese government gives money to the people who have to be relocated due to the dam, construction, or new roads or subways. They relocate them just out of the city to brand new towns. Then the government installs new bus lines and builds subways out to the new areas so people can get back to town for work. As they tear down the old housing (with no bathrooms), new high rises are built. The government will also give you money to combine with your own savings to purchase a high rise (land not included).

We took a nice clean train to Suzhou, which is called the “Garden City” or the “Eastern Venice.” At the train station, our guide told us to stick together like sticky rice and to elbow the people who were trying to get ahead of us in line. The seats on the train reclined and rotated to face back.

There is a leaning pagoda in Suzhou, like the leaning tower of Pisa. It’s an average sized city, about 2 million people! Here's a pretty garden that we visited:



We took a beautiful boat ride down the canals which reminded us of Venice, Italy. The homes are right on the water. Women were doing their laundry in the canals. The gardens are gorgeous. We saw boats decorated with hundreds of flowers, in preparation for a parade the following week.






We went to a silk factory and saw how silk is made-silkworms, cocoons, reeling, weaving, etc. I bought some silk scarves.

This afternoon, a speaker came to talk to us about the cultural revolution. He was a teacher at the time, so he spoke about the hardships. This time period destroyed China. The educated and elite were all sent to farms to be taught by the illiterate peasants. It set China back immensely. He admitted that it was Mao’s big error, but the people think that Mao did more good than harm so they still honor and respect him. Mao helped people in the long run, he says.

We visited a Senior Center. Former professionals teach classes to their peers who go 2-3 times a week. The life expectancy used to be 60 for women and 57 for men. It is now 82 for women and 79 for men! Some women danced and sang for us.

In Shanghai, there are 45 colleges, 800 middle schools, and 800 elementary schools, with 50 kids in a class. A neighborhood could have 98,000 people! In 1993, the “no excuses” bridge was built from West to East Shanghai so the husband can’t make excuses anymore why he was unable to come home.

Next we went to a market.




Look at these gigantic cucumbers!

Then we visited the condo of a middle-class family. The grandparents, parents, and one daughter live here. They served a nice lunch and we were able to take pictures.


Their refrigerator was in the dining room.


There are no single family homes in the cities. The few in the outskirts are called villas. And we were warned not to visit the “Suzie Wong” areas.

On the way to the airport, we took the Mag-Lev train which went 285 mph! It took us 7 minutes and 20 seconds to get the the airport and then we had to wait for the bus which had our luggage, another hour.

Here's a picture of the ceiling at the airport:


We flew to Wuhan and then took a bus to Jingzhou to board our boat on the Yangtze River.

Next…Yangtze River Cruise…