Days 8, 9 and 10

I seem to have fallen behind on my journal and will try to catch up today.

Our last day in Shanghai was more enjoyable than the first.  We went to a charming water town of Zhujiajiao which looked a lot like Venice with junques instead of gondolas.  Great shopping but we have very little time to do any.  People are beginning to be tired of being rushed here and there but our schedule is such that we really need to keep moving.  We have lunch at a Western buffet called Ashley's (I am not kidding) located in a department store.  It offers pizza, pasta as well as Chinese dishes.  Very casual and people manage to get some shopping in (not me!) and then we are off to Yu Gardens and a shopping bazaar.  Yu Gardens is actually close to our hotel and is a lovely oasis in this very busy city.  Rock formations and ponds filled with Koi.  Just like we imagine every Chinese having in their back yard except there is no such thing as a back yard in China.  Then to a beautiful area called Tianzifang which is billed as being filled with "many designer products" but mostly really cheap looking Rolex watches.  I didn't buy any but my roommate now owns 8!  We had dinner at a great dumpling restaurant in that area and it was exceptional.  A wonderful chicken soup...well, chicken broth for me as I was afraid to eat the chicken as they put the WHOLE thing in there.

Friday was a travel day.  We left the hotel and sweet little Vivenne and had an on-time flight to Hong Kong.  It was a great flight!  Okay, the seats are geared toward the Chinese (my butt is NOT Chinese!) but they served a full meal with wine (we were in coach) and Hagan Daaz Ice Cream!  We were all in a very tight heaven.  We land and are met by our new guide, Ben.  I wish I could tell you who he reminds me of but he is a really funny older gentleman with slicked backed hair and a great laugh.  We take to him immediately.  Nothing going on tonight.  My feet are so swollen that I am down to one pair of shoes that I can wear.  I stay in and put my feet up and the others fend for themselves.

Saturday was interesting.  We had a visit with an attache in charge of Agricultural Development at the US Embassy, which is located on Hong Kong Island.  Hong Kong itself looks like someone cracked open a huge geode and it is filled with tall, tall, tall crystal towers.  Beautiful and dirty at the same time but a lot of fun.  We are staying across from the island in Kowloon, near the Peninsula Hotel.  Great location near to Nathan road.

Anyway, after the meeting at the Embassy, we take a tour of the Kwang Chung container port (4th largest in the world), which is colorful but boring and then we have a few hours for lunch on our own.  Nancy, Lois and I go to the Peninsula and have a very expensive but tasty lunch.  Really relaxing and British.

Then we are off to the fish market area to see John Miller's partner's shop, I Love Rabbit.  John's company supplies them with the feed for small animals (gerbils, guinea pigs, rabbits) and they manage to sell $120,000 a month in feed and animals.  They figured out that, because the average apartment in Hong Kong is 500SQF, people don't really have room for dogs and cats but they can have small pets and sales are soaring.  Clever, really.

We were on our own for dinner so Nancy, Lois and I went to Temple Road where you can shop forever. We didn't buy much but it was a lot of fun.  Very colorful people.  I had to buy a new suitcase because mine cracked from top to bottom on the flight yesterday.  Honest, that is the reason!!!  We ended up at a weird bar across from the hotel where we had wine and french fries.  We talked to a Scottish man who divides his time between Shanghai and Sydney.  Very interesting.  Nancy and I did table karaoke, much to Lois' amusement.  Fun night and then to bed.  Feel's good to pry off my shoes.

Today we are visiting Hong Kong Island, going up the tram, ending in Stanley Market.  This may be my last post as tomorrow is our long travel day and then I will be home! 

This has been a good trip and was so well planned that I really did not need to be here.  I will definitely use this tour company again.

See you all soon!

China Day 7

Shanghai today and while it is cold it is sunny and apparently smog-free.  That does not last too long but it is still really nice.  Our hotel is good but a few people got bad rooms so I need to make that right.

We get started touring at 8:30 am and headed toward the Bund, which is on the old side of Shanghai on the river (sorry, I can't remember which one but it is part of the Yellow River group).  Shanghai was built on a river Delta and the Bund used to be a beach area.  The famous Peace Hotel is located front and central but there is no longer a beach.  The old part of Shanghai faces the new part across the river, which is called Pudong.  When I was here 30 years ago, there was nothing across the river.  Now there are tall office buildings lit up like Christmas trees.  There are over 3000 buildings that are 25 stories or more in Shanghai.  It is amazing.  And that does not count the thousands more that are "only "24 stories or less.  The Pudong area is also home to dozens of high-rise villages where the government moves the people that they displace when they raze old run-down, inefficient old-fashioned villages.  The government owns all of the land and buildings.  People can now get mortgages and buy apartments and offices but they are actually only leasing them for no more than 70 years.  During that time, they can sell them but the original lease still only runs 70 years.  I know this sounds terrible but all of the people seem very happy and taken care of.  You can imagine how this pisses off the good Americans traveling with me.

Then we headed to a silk factory where we learned all about silkworms and how they are raised and how silk is made into really nifty comforters.  By the time we left, there were a lot fewer blankets at the silk factory!  The bus looked like a white sale gone wild. We had a lot of fun.

Then on to Shanghai Slim's in the Oldest part of Shanghai for lunch.  It was really modern, however, and the manager was English.  We all wanted wine and he managed to get each of us a glass for only $7.00!  Our guide said she thinks we are all really lucky, happy people because no one in China would ever even think of ordering wine with lunch for NO reason!

We are then on to the Sunqiao Modern Agricultural Zone where we see a lot of hydroponic gardens and not much else.  It was a boring 3 miles walk but a lot of the farmers really enjoyed it.  We then went to a grocery store (Nancy likes to visit them to see how differently other countries shop) which turned out to be much nicer than any of our stores.  Everything was individually wrapped (eggs, fruits etc).  The store is in the basement of the most elegant mall I have ever seen.  Four stories of fabulous luxury.  This may be a communist country but it is definitely filled with capitalistic values.

After a very long day, we still had to take an hour boat trip up and down the river to see the lights of all of the skyscrapers on both banks.  It is freezing but very dramatically beautiful.  A cold and scenic ending to a very long day.

China Day 6

WOW!  We walked over 7 miles yesterday.  I wish I could say it was easy for me.
 
We started the day packing everyone up and sending our luggage to the Xi'an Airport.  Lee finally got the group together and we drove an hour to get to the huge complex that houses the 3 digs of the Terra Cotta Warriors.  When I was here in 1985, you could drive right up to the area where the first, most famous dig is.  Now everything is housed in huge, covered arena-type buildings and a big square has been built between them.  I won't even go into the parking lot.  Anyway, we probably walked two miles to get in and two miles out with the other three miles at the digs.  My favorite is still the original dig.

The Warriors were discovered in 1974 by some farmers digging a well.  They found shards and most of them just thought they were junk.  A fourth farmer decided to let the government officials know and he has become famous for it.  He is still alive and actually signs books in the gift shop.  Yes, I bought one.  What can I say?  He looks like he will be dead pretty soon.  Anyway, archeologists came to the site and it was soon determined that these shards were part of a huge field of relics which turned out to be over 6000 warriors and horses and bronze chariots.  The last emperor of the Qin (sounds like Ching) Dynasty was responsible for the clay army because he wanted them to protect him after he died.  Ironically, he was the last emperor of this dynasty which had lasted 400 years.  It was overthrown the following year.  There are still a lot of areas left to dig so there may be many more warriors uncovered in the future but the Chinese government is in no hurry.

After a little shopping, we head the hour to our lunch spot, which was a really great buffet with both Western and Chinese food.  Something for everyone.  Then we have an hour to the airport.
Everyone has been worried about this internal flight.  They have read all of the information that says their bags must not weigh more than 40 lbs and that they can only carry on 11 lbs.  I keep trying to tell them that we have arranged for all bags to be checked as a group and that everything really works out perfectly when it comes to carry-on.  Of course, I am right and it is a breeze getting through security and onto the flight.  Only problem was the flight was over an hour late so we don't get to Shanghai until 8 pm.  Of course, it is an hour to our hotel, depending on traffic.  This has become a joke with us.  Our guide here has the best English so far and her name is Viviene.  I hope she is as good as Joan.

On to another day....more hours on the bus, more Chinese food, more republican snide remarks.
I do have to clarify something.  It turns out that there are only 3 people on this trip that are older than I am.  Everyone else is younger and it is sobering.  One turned 25 yesterday!  There is a 26 year old farmer who is 6'7' and I just love him.  I think most of these people look really old so I can only imagine what they think of me, especially since I am in such bad shape.

Love and miss you all!  Only 5 days to go.

Day 5 China

Day 5 was a transfer day as we left Beijing for Xi'an.  We had to leave our wonderful guide, Joan, behind but she saw us right onto the train...probably wanted to make sure we were really gone! The train ride was cool.  We were all in first class and Joan had gotten us Subway sandwiches (yes, from Subway) and chips and bananas for the train ride.  Tasted just like Subway but the bananas almost liquid inside.  Anyway, we headed south and at times we were traveling over 300 kmh.  That is about 190 mph!  Very smooth and quiet so you didn't realize you were going this fast.  The seats got uncomfortable after about 5 hours but the landscape is fascinating.  Lots of huge farms but more high rise buildings (we are talking 30 to 40 stories) in groups of 15 to 25 out in the middle of nowhere.  Apparently the government is eliminating a lot of the little villages and moving the workers into these centralized "cities".  We really don't see a lot of open countryside.  And the smog is no better here than in Beijing.

We get to Xi'an about 4:00 pm and meet Lee, our young hipster guide for the next two days.  He is wearing torn jeans and a Metallica t-shirt and looks 18.  Turns out he is 31.  Not married as he does not have the money yet for a house (translate that to apartment).  It turns out that the one child policy of the Chinese government over the past 30 years has produced a lot of boys and far fewer girls.  In the old days, boys were the preferred child as they could carry on the family name.  We all have heard the stories about girl children being left on hillsides to die.  We also all know someone with an adopted Chinese daughter as the Chinese would not let boys be adopted outside the country.  WELL, the worm has turned and now girl babies are preferred!  There are not enough young women for the young men and it is a sellers market here for brides.  If you are a young man and want to marry, you better bring a lot to the table.  Young women and their families expect a nice home, savings and a good car (preferably BMW or Range Rover).  The government has reversed their one-child policy and now will allow two.  There are lots and lots of very coveted , adorable little girls being toted around by proud daddies now.
 
Xi'an is a city of 7 million people in a provence of 38 million.  I thought the train station was in the middle of the downtown because there were hundreds and hundreds of high-rise buildings.  But that was only the beginning of the suburbs.  We traveled through hundreds and hundreds more of these buildings.  I felt like a bug in "A Bug's Life".  It took us 40 minutes of this to get to the city-center which, thankfully, had more diverse architecture.  We are at the Renmin Square Sofitel and the rooms are really nice.  For tonight only, I got my own room and I love it.  I don't know why but I am not asking any questions!  We had a cocktail party for a professor from the Northwest Agricultural Research University (her name was YU Ying - she said to call her Ying) and she was really informative.  UNL and her university have been trading students and cultural information for about 4 years and she really loves Nebraska.  We had some snacks (tasty but not enough for dinner) and wine (doled out in 2 tablespoon increments - I followed the server around like a puppy dog begging for more) then we were all free for dinner.  I ate with Nancy and Lois.  Both think the trip is going extremely well and I would have to agree.  I am learning a lot even though I will never remember it all or even some of it.

Hope all is well there.  We are having sunny days (but not clear with all of this smog) but it is cooooooold!

Day 4 China Adventure

Weird day today.  I woke up exhausted after the Great Wall trek but rallied right away.  We had to get the luggage ready to ship out to Xi'an today even though we are leaving tomorrow.  We have to plan what we need for today, tonight and tomorrow and only take carry-on bags.  I am downstairs by 6:30 am to get the luggage and get it on the truck.  At 7 am the group has a Soybean seminar until 8:30 am so I have a little time for breakfast.

We head to the northeast part of the city to a food manufacturing plant, Pueng Chang.   It is a huge plant and processed all of the pork for the Olympic athletes.  I did not realize that we were going to see the whole butchering process.  I guess if I am going to eat it I should see where it comes from.  The night before we had a wonderful pork belly and I am glad we had not been to this plant yet.  I doubt if I would have eaten it!

After the plant we went to a "chain" Chinese Restaurant that had over 1000 people in it on two levels.  Another Lazy Susan meal but surprisingly good.  Kind of like a Denny's only much bigger and family style.  Then we are off to the Summer Palace which is only about 150 years old but a really beautiful and huge park around a lake.  It was a lovely afternoon with no smog as there was a breeze.  I probably have not mentioned the smog before.  It is really heavy.  You are driving along a highway and 30 story buildings appear out of the haze only a few hundred feet if front of you, like ghosts.  It is like a very thick fog sometimes.  I feel stuffed up all of the time and a lot of my people are having sinus problems.

After the Summer Palace (which, by the way, was created by the Dragon Lady - the original woman behind the throne as her son became emperor at age 4 so she really ruled the country.  When he died, she picked the next two kings and they were ages 3 and 6 so she was always the
real string-puller), we head to pearl shop.  We had requested it as we had had no time for shopping and everyone wanted to buy pearls.  A lot of money was spent but not by me.

We were supposed to go to another Chinese meal but the group rebelled and we got to skip it and have pizza in the lobby as well as a real glass of wine!  I know it was real because it cost me $28.00!  The pizza was only $16!

In bed by 9:00 pm and it feels great.  I will miss this hotel and Joan, our guide.  She was a real asset and I am afraid none of the other guides will be nearly as informative and funny.  On to Xi'an tomorrow.

Day 3 Still Beijing

Again, I am at the end of Day 4 but will try to remember day 3.  I am so tired at night that I cannot work on this and now must play catch-up.

We started the day early and headed northwest of the city to Reinke Corp Beijing operations.  Reinke makes center pivot sprinklers and has a manufacturing plant here.  It is in the Muyong district of Beijing Province (of which Beijing is the capitol) and we got a tour of the plant and a lot of information that I can't remember.  All I do know is that they make a lot of money with very few employees.  And we got a baseball cap that says Reinke.  The manager of the plant is a Chinese born U.S  citizen named John Liu whose home is Omaha when he is not in China.

We then had a surprise visit to the headquarters of the of the Muyong Financial District which is kind of like an SID in Omaha.  We got weak tea and a long marketing video all in Chinese.   This took another hour. 


Lunch was at the Brickhouse Restaurant and Hotel near the Great Wall.  It is owned by an American married to a Chinese woman and it feels very modern.  They have a sustainable garden and a very green operation.  Their selling point was that Michelle Obama spent time there and really liked what they were doing.  Obviously, this did not impress my group.  It was really cool and I loved the whole lunch which was good because the next hour was sheer hell.
 
Joan said we had to walk a few blocks to the lift that would take us to the Great Wall.  It turned out to be two miles at a 50 degree pitch that almost killed me.  I am not sure that everything is as okay with my heart as Dr. Koster says.  All of these old people just kept on walking and I struggled the whole way.  It was embarrassing and kind of frightening.  My chest still felt bruised today.  The view, however, was worth it.  What a monumental feat!  While it turns out that you cannot see the Great Wall from space, it is still really impressive and I am glad I made the trek.  The pollution that hung over the horizon was disturbing but made for a beautiful sunset.

The a two hour drive back to the hotel (the traffic here is horrendous....no one really knows how to drive but they all have agreed not to make a fuss about it and just try not to kill anyone!)  We got back at 6:30 pm and had to meet this jerk from the Soybean Board who was taking us to dinner.  We had an hour drive (we were two miles from the restaurant but the traffic was torture) and then a long boring Lazy Susan dinner (again!!!) then a much shorter drive back to the hotel.  The only good thing was that I got a glass of wine out of the deal. 

We have to have our bags ready to be taken to the train by 7 am tomorrow even though we don't leave for two days so we need to make sure that we have everything we need in our carry-on bags.
We don't get to bed until after midnight and have to be up at 5:30 am.  This is a hard trip.

Day 2 of China Adventure

I am actually just finishing up day 3 but I did not get a chance to go over Day 2 so here is what I remember.

Woke up extremely tired but felt better than first day.  Hotel has a wonderful breakfast buffet which we all love.  Our guide, Joan, is a treasure.  She gets us everywhere with little or no fuss.  She takes changes in stride and is extremely organized.  She is working on her third degree (her masters) because she "just loves to study" which amazes all of us.  She says that any Chinese kid who wants to have a well-rounded life (not monetarily successful, mind-you) must enjoy educating oneself.  She is a little island of peace for me in the midst of a bunch of right-wing Obama haters.  They make a big deal about allowing me to be part of their group but said one democrat in 35 people pretty much fits in with Nebraska demographics, but they will only allow one.  What an honor.

Today we went to the Temple of Heaven, a large park and imperial place of worship.  The park was really great...lots of old retired people playing backgammon, dominos or some weird card game.  Dance and tai chi (yes, I took pictures) and a net-less badminton.  The Temple itself was lovely and newly painted blue (heaven), gold (the royal family) and green (all the rest of us, usually at the bottom.)

From there we went to another Lazy Susan lunch and rickshaw ride in the Hutong area which is like our old market except 700 years old.  Very picturesque.  We visited a courtyard home which was filled with bird cages with live birds.  The rooms were built around a courtyard and housed a multi-generational family (until the communist takeover when they then crammed 4 families into the same space.)  And then to Tianamen Square which is the largest public square in the world.  Lots of concrete.  Our guide was very circumspect about the 16 people who were killed in 1989 during the protests.  She said she would talk about it later but it has not come up yet. Then we went into the Forbidden City which actually makes the Square look normal.  In the afternoon alone, we walked 5.8 miles not counting the amount of time spent standing on cold concrete and stepping over 12" thresholds (they keep ghosts out apparently).  The Forbidden City was forbidden to anyone who was not part of the imperial family or invited in by the imperial family.  Many more blue, gold and green buildings, almost all newly repainted for the Olympics.  The government spent billions and billions of yuan making over the city and surrounding territory (also known as Beijing).  There are 6 yuan to the dollar.  That is a lot of any currency but it sure made for a very clean and very safe city.  If only we could read Chinese, I could feel very comfortable here.  Oh it would also help if more people spoke English but they don't AT ALL.

Last night we went for our Peking Duck dinner (yes, another Lazy Susan) and still no wine.  I could not even buy a glass.  They gave us two bottles of beer and a quart of Coke for 9 people and we could not get anymore.  There was an odd floor show that thankfully only lasted 10 minutes.  A Chinese Face-changer who danced...yes, it was as odd as it sounds; and a magician who had to shake all of our hands after the performance.  We all checked to make sure our watches were still there.  It took us an hour in the traffic to cross town.  I fell into bed (even though I had vowed to stop in the bar to get a glass of wine) and did not even remember to send out my daily musings.  Miss you all so much!  More tomorrow.

China Day 1

I promised Mark I would try to send a day-by-day journal of my trip and since it is 5 am on Friday and I am wide awake, I thought I would take a shot at this.

Wednesday flights were pretty uneventful.  Fully half of the group was at the airport at 5:30 am when I arrived and check-in was easier.  Slight scare when one of my travelers said our flight was delayed by 3 hours! Turns out that the delayed flight was the 6:00 am flight, not our 7:22 am flight.  Whew!  That flight still had not left when we did.
 
Loooooong layover in O'Hare.  Our flight to Beijing on time.  I thought I would feel bad for being in Business class but I didn't so much since my seat was in the last row and near the galley!  Noisy and busy.  Also, the only people on the plane older and fatter than me were the flight attendants! OMG!  One even walked with a pronounced rocking limp that was painful to watch.  And these were not friendly people.
 
Anyway, we arrive in Beijing to long lines and lots of traffic.  Our guide was waiting for us outside of Customs and she is a friendly little Chinese woman who we are to call "Joan".  Apparently her Chinese name is too hard to pronounce.  She gave us a lot of good information about China on the 90 minute drive into the city.  Beijing is NOT the most populated Chinese city with 21 million people.  First place goes to Chunging on the Southern coast,  2nd to Shanghai and then Beijing.
Also, there are 80,000 characters in the Chinese written language but they only use about 5000 in daily writing.  My brain froze up after that.

Got to the hotel (Marriott City Wall - very nice and great beds!  No more sand pillows) and had 20 minutes to get ready for dinner with the representative from the U.S. Embassy and, of course, then he was late.  Surprised by Nancy leading a group, hand-holding grace before we ate!  What?  Are we going to have to do that before every meal?  I thought there was no G in LEAD!?!
No wine with dinner (and after that, I really needed some!) but everyone so tired it was hard to eat.  We had our first of many, I suppose, family style dinners with the lazy Susan in the middle of the table and at least a dozen unpronounceable, too cold, unidentifiable dishes that really did not fill us up.  No rice!  Lots of water.  I am very glad I have all of those Gold Fish crackers in my suitcase.  Colin and Esa need to come over here and teach these people a thing or two about seasoning.
Finally, finally, after an hour of very boring speeches about genetic seeds and research (they are all for it) and beef trade embargoes (they are all against those), we were free to go to bed at 10 pm.  My roommate, Lois, is a very nice person from Minden but I hate sharing a room with someone who doesn't love me!  Anyway, she had a bad night (up a lot with diarrhea) so once she is out of the (very nice) bathroom I am going to shower and head out into the day.  Full day of sightseeing, ending with a Peking duck dinner.  Hope it is better than last nights!