Our China Trip in May

China Trip, May 2010.

An inauspicious start.
It was the end of April and the beginning of May 2010; the rain came and kept pouring without stop for two full days. The soils of Nashville were oversaturated and could no longer absorb additional moisture. The rivers started to crest and overflow, first the Harpeth then the Cumberland and soon some areas of Nashville were distressingly under water. It resulted in the worst flood in the living memories of the citizens here.
We were among the fortunate ones because we had just moved to a new high-rise condominium complex about a month ago and were now situated comfortably on the 4th floor. Were we to still stay in our old house at Merrymount Drive we would have been stranded for days because the roads leading to our subdivision were cut off by flood water. Several of the houses on the edge of our subdivision were in fact badly damaged; one was even completely under water! Fortunately our house was not affected and yet its likelihood of being sold in short order would now be seriously jeopardized.
We were then eagerly anticipating our trip to China on May 4th, scheduling to fly to San Jose one day earlier with an overnight stay in the house of our friends who would accompany us during the trip. Yet, the continuous TV coverage of the disastrous flood scenes had greatly dampened our gay spirit. Even the airport was closed for a while but fortunately it reopened the next day. Thus we managed to escape the devastation of flood in our hometown and sought solace in the exotic land on the other side of the Pacific!

A debacle at the Inchon International Airport.
Initially we were planning on going to Shanghai near the end of June to roughly coincide with the appearance of Melvin and the Bard student quartet at the US pavilion of the World Expo. Since the friends we would be visiting in China resided in Zhengzhou (the husband is the buddy of our friend in California) and only the Korean Airline had a daily (in the morning!) international flight from Seoul, an overnight stay at the airport hotel was thus mandatory to make the needed connection. The airline just happened to have a promotion for cheaper fares and bonus free overnight hotel stays for flights on or before May 22nd, we thus jumped at it and moved ahead our departure date to May 4th. To our infinite consternation, we found out upon arrival in Seoul that no hotel reservations were made for us at the transit hotel in Inchon International Airport. We thus had no choice but to pay for the rooms from our own pockets ($175/rm/12hrs). Fortunately there were several free internet computers at the airport for passengers’ use and I immediately fired an email to our travel agent in SF. Lo and behold I got a response in the morning apologizing for her negligence and promised to reimburse those expenses upon our return!

Arrival in Zhengzhou.
Zhengzhou is the capital of Henan Province and its importance derives from a position astride the meeting of the north-south (Beijing to Guangzhou) and east-west (Shanghai to Xian) rail lines, likely the most important rail junction in China. Our host in Zhengzhou was born and educated in Taiwan but retired from working in the States, and is currently developing a biotechnology park in this important and rapidly developing city.
Our plane finally touched down on the runway of Zhengzhou Airport and I immediately turned on the unlocked T-Mobile cell phone with Shanghai sim card inserted (all purchased via internet in the States before the trip, thanks to Melvin’s suggestion). Understandably I was very anxious to find out if it actually works, so I dialed our friend’s phone number and by George it worked beautifully! This phone proved so useful that our trip would have been miserable without it.
We were greeted at the airport by our hostess and their chauffer who immediately transported us to a fancy restaurant without unloading our luggage. It just happened that this particular day our host was wining and dining some municipal VIPs, so another table was quickly set up next door to welcome our arrival with a feast. It also happened to be his 75th birthday so it all ended with a hearty rendition of ‘happy birthday to you’ and full bellies for us!
We decided to take it easy the next day and relax before embarking on a long journey to Jiuzaigou (suspected location of Shangri la). Upon learning how inexpensive it is to have a haircut in China (about two dollars) and with a hair salon conveniently located around the corner, I opted for the cut as my hairs were beginning to look like those of Beethoven and Einstein (sadly not their brains!). It was a real treat as my head was expertly handled by several pairs of hands with washing, cutting, drying all included, and the best part was that I didn’t even have to pay for it because it was put into our host’s account. We then walked back to his house which is located in a gated community. At the entrance we were met by a uniform guard standing erect and greeting us with a formal military salute. It was kind of awkward but I had never felt so important in my entire life!
Since the renown Shaolin Temple is literally in the backyard of Zhengzhou, we decided to go there the next day. I felt a special kinship to this temple because for years my younger son Irwin had been taking martial art lessons from a Shaolin master in New York who was a genuine monk abandoned by his parents as an infant and grew up inside the Temple. So we were anxiously anticipating this special visit. Unfortunately it is now so commercialized in and around the Temple that I was understandably quite disappointed.

On to Jiuzaigou, one of nature’s wonders in China.
I heard about the natural beauty of Jiuzaigou even before coming to China. Here I copied a short description from a travel website: Jiuzhaigou is a deep valley of stunning natural beauty, approximately 620 sq km in area in north Sichuan. It is a national park and has also been declared a UNESCO World Heritage site. The name Jiuzhaigou refers to the nine Tibetan villages which are situated in the valley. The valley has a variety of natural scenery - lakes, waterfalls, snowy mountains and lush green forests. There are also more than one hundred lakes of various sizes and shapes which sparkle with iridescent colors.
Originally we were going to fly all the way there, but our host wanted to showcase and for us to enjoy the fastest bullet train on earth. So we took the bullet train from Zhengzhou to Xian followed by an overnight rest in a hotel there before boarding an airplane to our destination next morning. We had an exciting landing on an airstrip sitting on the plateau of the mountain range. We were then transported to our hotel some distance away. Next day we spent the entire time at Jiuzaigou walking and enjoying its natural beauty. The sceneries could have been even more spectacular were we to come in the autumn when there would be more water to enhance the characters of the lakes and the beautiful landscape could further be accentuated by the colorful fall foliage.
Before our return to Zhengzhou, we were led to a big store selling Tibetan herbal medicines. It was an impressive operation with four resident herbal doctors situated conveniently at the four corners of the store. You could go and let them read your palms and/or fingers and they would tell you what was wrong with your body and prescribe the needed herbal supplements for you to buy and carry home. Some of their diagnoses were in general quite on target. For example, by looking at the fingers of our California friend, one of the doctors immediately diagnosed his Type II diabetes and prescribed $300 worth of herbal remedies. We were thus pretty much sold on that particular doctor. When she looked at my palm and proclaimed that I didn’t have any serious illness and should be able to live past my 90th birthday, I was secretly congratulating myself. Then she prescribed an herbal regimen to be soaked in white wine and with a daily drink of a small cup to last for about10 years. However the price-tag was a bit steep for my taste: $300 for the herbal mix. But were it to work it would be more than worth the money. Even though I had the hunch that we were being had, I was not going to bet my life with that measly $300, so I went along and bought it! Later on we found out that we had paid about ten times what one could have gotten in Zhengzhou or Shanghai. Those kinds of thing had happened time and again during our travel around the globe but we never seem to learn! Well, that’s life!
Next day we retraced our paths back to Zhengzhou and the bullet train, true to its billing, went up to around 350 km/hr as our host was keeping a close tap on it (sorry, do your own conversion if you are curious to know in MPH!). We rather enjoyed the train rides. In fact during the Zhengzhou to Xian ride I struck up a conversation with a rather pleasant girl seating next to me and she turned out to be a tour guide in Luoyang leading a group of young tourists to Xian. She was instrumental in helping us arranging a one day trip from Shanghai to Hangzhou days later.

A two day side-trip to Taishan and three planned one day trips.
After a day’s respite, we were again eager to venture out for a side trip. Taishan is a popular attraction and is also known to have a spectacular sunrise. This majestic mountain is a national park and the holiest and most revered of the sacred mountains in China. In imperial times, many newly established emperors would come to the mountain to worship heaven and perform grand sacrificial ceremonies. Many historical relics as well as stone carvings from various dynasties could be found there. Taishan has also been a site of pilgrimage and worship for Buddhists, Daoists, and Confucianists, thus many temples and shrines dot the slopes of the mountain. In 1987, UNESCO listed Taishan as part of the World Natural and Cultural Heritage.
Unfortunately it needed a five hour drive to get there because it is located in Shangdong Province. To avoid an early morning hike to the mountain top to catch a glimpse of the sunrise, we opted to stay overnight at the more expensive hotel near the summit. Unfortunately the weather was not kind to us and it rained the whole time we were there! So we packed up our things again the next day and got down the mountain via chair-lift and on with another five hour drive back to Zhengzhou much to our chagrin.
On our way back we managed to stop at Qufu to visit Confucius Mansions which were built over 2,000 years ago to house Confucius’s descendents (the Kong family). The luxurious complex has more than 460 rooms, buildings and halls and was noted to be the finest residence in China after the Imperial Palace. The grandeur of the compound is testament to the power and prestige of the Kong family. They ruled the town of Qufu and its environs and had the powers of taxation and execution.
We had three more 1-day trips set up with the local travel agent, these were:
Trip #1: Luoyang with main attractions being the Longmen Grottoes and the White Horse Temple. The Longmen Grottoes, located 7 miles south of Luoyang, the area is a made up of 1,350 caves, bubbling rivers and limestone cliffs. Others believe that the Great Yu, controller of floods, split the mountain to release an imprisoned dragon, hence the name "longmen" or dragon gate. Added to nature’s gifts are more than 750 niches and 40 pagodas containing close to 100,000 statues carved from the sheer limestone. The largest of these statues stands over 17 meters (56ft) tall and the smallest is a mere 2cm (0.8 inches). The White Horse Temple, located 7 miles east of Luoyang, was built in 68AD and was the 1st Buddhist temple founded in China. This historically important temple is often referred to as the "Number One Ancient Temple in China". Legend says that two Indian monks brought Buddhist scriptures to Luoyang on white horses and the founders named the temple after this event. Many of the halls and statues found in this monastery dated back to the Yuan and Ming dynasties (1206-1644AD).
Trip#2: Yuntaishan: Covered with luxuriant original forest, Yuntai Mountain has several deep valleys and ponds, myriad waterfalls and springs, picturesque perilous cliffs and peaks, which compose the unique scenery. Tablet inscriptions of famed poets are exhibited here and they add cultural meaning to the mountain. Yuntai Mountain gains its name from history. Xiandi, Emperor of Han Dynasty, had left the resort terrace and the tomb base here. It had been the secluded place of seven Bamboo Forest Sages of the Wei and the Jin Period. Medicine King, Sun Simiao, once collected Chinese medicine here. Many historical stories are spreading in the area related to some fames once visited here.
Trip#3: Kaifeng. Kaifeng is one of the seven ancient capitals and famous historic cities. It has a history of more than 2,700 years. It was the capitals of Wei Dynasty (Warring States Period), Later Liang, Jin, Han, Zhou (Five Dynasties Period), Northern Song and Jin Dynasties. So Kaifeng is known as "the Capitals of Seven Dynasties". With its long history, splendid traditional culture, numerous cultural relics and historic sites, Kaifeng is famous in the world. Especially during the Northern Song Dynasty, boasting a population of over one million, Kaifeng was most flourishing with the inner and outer city walls magnificently built, and commodities assembled from all over the world. Kaifeng had established friendship relations with foreign countries from that time. It was not only a center of politics economy, culture of the whole country, but also one of the most prosperous capital cities in the world. So the city was known as an international metropolis.
Unfortunately the torturous windy and bumpy mountainous roads had finally caught up with us during the first one day trip. The wife of our California friend had motion sickness and she suffered serious vomiting near the end. So for the second one day trip we were down to three people. Then disaster struck and the poor sanitary condition at the restaurant where we ate our lunch finally did us in. Except for Katherine, both the male members experienced serious vomiting and diarrhea after we got back to Zhengzhou. Further exasperated by his faithful intake of the sugar-lowering medication, our diabetic friend from California was alarmingly weakened to the point that he was all ears and no response during conversations next morning. Luckily a nourishing breakfast and a cup of hot coffee eventually rejuvenated his alertness. We thus decided to forgo the third one day trip to Kaifeng for that day and opted to go directly down to Shanghai, ahead of schedule.

Onward march to Shanghai.
Since the bullet train rails from Zhengzhou to Shanghai are yet to be completed (one of the many lines to be soon added in China), we decided to take the next best train which would take about seven hours. So we bought the first class seats which are bit more spacious and comfortable. We purchased lunch boxes in the train which included a bowl of hot soup. It was fairly tasty but somehow not as delicious as the bento boxes we had on the Taiwan train several years ago. The seven hour train ride was not that bad and we finally arrived in Shanghai and hired a taxi to our hotel in the Pudong side.
I managed to hook up with a distant relative of mine living in Shanghai that evening. I had met her when I first came to China in 1978 to visit my great uncle in Beijing. She was then a teenager and her parents brought her along to meet me at my hotel in Shanghai more than forty years ago. This time she came with her husband and a grown-up son who works for a Japanese company in Shanghai. Since they were also living in the Pudong area, they came to our hotel room to pay me a courtesy visit. She was kind enough to write down for me some of the interesting places we could go bargain hunting and book shopping. Armed with that information, we went out next day to an underground shopping arcade right at the subway stop for the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum. Katherine was visibly elated when she spotted a handbag of her liking and got it with about a thirty percent discount. Soon after, however, a man from Taiwan came round to say hello because he heard our conversations in Taiwanese and he advised us that we should start the bargaining process by slashing the asking price to a third! But that didn’t dampen Katherine’s spirit as she liked her bag with that price just fine! Anyway we did get some good bargains (in our mind!) using that tactic.

Three days at the 2010 Shanghai World Expo and the most amazing coincidence.
Next day we went to the World Expo for the first time. We took the hotel shuttle bus and arrived at one of the entrance gates at 8:45 in the morning. We felt sure we were going to get into the popular China pavilion because its gate opens at 9:30 a.m. But alas, the Expo ground was already jam packed and by the time we got to the China pavilion the tickets for that day had all been handed out! We later learnt that unless you were part of a tour group, one had to come round at 6 a.m. to have a decent chance of getting that day’s ticket for the China pavilion. However, the luck was on our side! It just happened that on the second day of our Expo visit, our Zhengzhou host came down from Beijing with a group (Berkerly-Tsinghua alumni association) and they were being treated with a visit at the World Expo. Our host got creative and proposed that we tagged along the coattail of their group to gain entrance to Taiwan and China pavilions. We were successful at the China pavilion but I was ejected at the Taiwan pavilion (maybe my guilty conscience was clearly written on my forehead, because Katherine and our California friends got in just fine!)
From a casual conversation with a taxi driver, we learned later that the Shanghai municipal government gave out a free ticket to each household and a $30 transportation subsidy for the locals to attend the Expo, thus the huge crowd on the Expo ground. There were visitors from foreign lands but they were overwhelmed by the natives and appeared to be relatively insignificant in comparison. Thus, one tended to cast an extra glance when seeing a foreign face. One day while strolling along one of the Expo avenues, a white face holding a ski-like stick attracted my attention. His face was badly bruised and purple with black eyes. I approached him and said ‘I know you!’, but he registered no recognition. I then said ‘I am from Nashville’ but he said ‘no, I was in St. Louis once’, still not registering. I had no choice but to reveal the fact that we were touring Iran together two years ago! There upon his eyes lighted up and his wife came round and greeted me warmly. He and his wife were both scientists residing in Switzerland but now retired, and he had once done some research at Washington University in St. Louis during that golden age (in the ‘50s) when several of the future Nobel Laureates were doing biomedical research in that distinguished institution, including Katherine’s old boss Stanly Cohen of Vanderbilt University. One time he accompanied his wife to Hong Kong to attend a conference of her specialty, he decided to go take lessons on Chinese cooking to get rid of his boredom! Anyway I asked him about the black eyes and the bruises, he said he fell down the steps in Soochow while visiting an ancient temple-tower the day before. Soochow is renowned for producing Chinese beauties, I was too diplomatic to advance the hypothesis that he was not concentrating on the steps but side-glancing at some beautiful girls passing by! After a short chat I gripped his hand to bid farewell but he cried out ‘not so hard!’ Poor chap, travelling all the way from Switzerland to fall on the steps of ancient China! My heart went out to him.
Because of the huge crowd, one would typically wait for at least 5 hours to gain entrance to a popular pavilion such as that of Saudi Arabia. So we decided to just stroll around and took pictures as the Expo is an architectural wonderland. And thus ended our three day visit to the 2010 Shanghai Expo without seeing much of the exhibitions!

Shanghai sightseeing on our own and a delicious find.
With the helpful tips from some of our friends in Shanghai, we were able to explore the city of Shanghai on our own: A cursory stroll through a gigantic eight-floor book store called ‘Shanghai Book Town’, an afternoon visit to Shanghai Museum, a relaxing walk along the Bund, a sumptuous dinner in the rotating restaurant of the Oriental Pearl TV Tower with a panoramic view of the city of Shanghai from the top, tour and shop at Chenghuang Temple and Xin Tian Di, did some bargain hunting in underground malls, and window shopping along the trendy shops on the West Nanking Road. While in Shanghai we also took two 1-day trips, one to Hangzhou and the other to Nanking. It was too bad that rain accompanied our Hangzhou trip but the Nanking visit was fine.
One day we took the subway to the People’s Square. Without knowing, however, we stumbled into the People’s Park upon exiting the subway stop. There were people chatting, milling around, or doing Taichi exercises. There was also make-shift walls filled with advertisements and I was curious to find out what they were selling or buying. To my surprise and delight, those were mate-seeking ads mostly by old folks. I saw several which were placed by men or women over eighty. I guess this was the Chinese version of match.com for senior citizens! Some were even sitting down next to the fountain with cardboard ads in front while some interested parties were doing real-time live interviews! With a serious air I served Katherine a fair notice: next time we have a domestic hot or cold war, I am going to buy a one-way ticket and fly to Shanghai with my personal cardboard ad!
Except for some issues related to quality of life, the progress in China since my first visit in 1978 has been astonishing. One may well wonder how the inherently inefficient democratic governments of the west with high labor and runaway health care costs could effectively compete in the future with a capitalistic China of 1.3 billion hard-working people under a brutally effective regime. With that somber reflection, our exhausting month-long trip to China came to an end and we arrived home happy, ready to resume the mundane daily tennis routines.