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Landed in Shanghai, took a taxi from the airport to our hotel. IMPORTANT: Don't listen to touts who offer taxi service! Exit the airport door showing "taxis," get in line and wait your turn. It should run about $21 for a 45-minute trip. There are also buses that take you to downtown Shanghai for less and the wonderful Maglev train that only takes 8 minutes. Unfortunately, it didn't stop anywhere near our hotel. You'd have to take a taxi from the end point.
My idea of heaven is ending a semi-difficult trip (or not) in a deluxe 5***** hotel and you can't ask for a hotel more wonderful than Four Seasons...the ultimate in luxury and service. What a treat to be in a hotel with people waiting to welcome us in English, toilets that flush (goodbye squat and public toilets), steaming hot water, a cushy bed with fluffy pillows, fruit in the room, and body lotion. Yes...I'm shallow... Nirvana for me and ex-Marine's idea of heaven is CNN, ESPN (to see what the Chicago Cubs and Chicago White Sox were doing) and newspapers in English.
Shanghai city view from our room
Continue reading "In Shanghai For A Third Visit - Heaven...I'm In Heaven..." »
What an interesting trip. We discovered the Eastern Tibetan Plateau wasn't as untraveled as you may be led to believe. Chinese Nationals are the primary tourists right now but every year more Westerners discover this huge area with its variety of sights. It's changing rapidly - like the rest of the world - get there now! Some more facts for you:
- The roads were uniformly excellent.
- The nicer the hotel, the worse the food. Stick to the little "hole in the wall" eateries for really great food.
- The Chinese eat communally using their chopsticks to eat out of the same serving bowl. Hard to get used to watching chopsticks go in someone else's mouth and then used to pick out another helping from the same dish, but we never got sick.
Continue reading "Reflections on Eastern Tibet" »
A Red Panda resembles a raccoon! Both the Giant Panda and Red Pandas share characteristics of both bears and raccoons but are only distantly related. Other Red Panda facts?
- The Red Panda is native to Nepal's Himalayas, Southern China, Southern Tibet, Bhutan and also found sparsely in a few other countries. It too is classified as "endangered" with an estimated population of less than 2,500. Hunted for its fur and bushy tail (think "coonskin cap") in China, their fur is often used in local cultural ceremonies and weddings.
- They like elevations of 1,800-4,800m/5,900-15,700' (they live high), forests with rhododendrons and bamboo, and nest in rock dens and old hollow trees.
- Red Pandas spend the day sleeping on high branches of trees and spend most of their lives, living predominantly in trees. They also have territories and are loners.
Red Panda sleeping in his tree
Continue reading "The Endangered Red Pandas of China" »
What would a trip to the Chengdu area be without a visit to the Giant Panda Breeding Institute to see those adorable Pandas? Suggestion: Go early in the morning because after snarfing down piles of bamboo, the Pandas go into a food-coma (just like us) and sleep for hours.
The Giant Panda Breeding Institute doesn't open until 9:00 a.m. and off we went. It took over an hour to get through all the traffic. People make left turns through red lights, drive through red lights, go into opposing traffic to get around each other...and then there are bicycles and scooters going in all directions. Nervewracking. At first I thought, swell...this is just going to be like going to a zoo...then we'll see two Pandas and leave... How very wrong could one person be. One of the most fantastic experiences of our lives. The Institute's grounds are huge and spread over many acres. Left the car in the parking lot (thankfully, without too many tour buses yet) and started walking into the grounds, heading directly for the Panda enclosures.
Giant Panda Breeding Institute Map
Continue reading "The Giant Panda Breeding Institute In Chengdu" »
It is a omplete surprise that we haven't seen any dead bodies, animals or auto accidents anywhere on this trip. The highways (with the exception of tollways around Xining) are two-lanes filled with cars, trucks, people walking on the road, sheep and yaks crossing at will, little tractors. Going through unlit tunnels with little tractors ahead of you in the darkness was very scary. Oh...and I forgot to add...everyone passes on curves...mountains or not. Today would be the last long drive to Chengdu. No more Tibetan Autonomous zones...no more yaks...each small town and city would be primarily Chinese.
Our driver was a rabid smoker and packs of Chinese cigarettes run anywhere from 3-20 yuan...most commonly 10 yuan a pack. There was plenty of time for him to smoke with all the road delays. We sat at one place for close to an hour while the road builders flagged one row of traffic at a time through this three-block area. I watched the cabbage trucks heading to market with pounds of road dirt on each cabbage...
cabbage truck
Continue reading "From Mao Xian (Maoxian) to Chengdu" »
It would be two hours by road before reaching Mu Ni Gou, located in Song Pan County. Songpan is east of the vast Aba Autonomous Prefecture which sprawls over the Sichuan, Gansu and Qinghai borders. This area is the domain of the Goloks (a nomadic group of herders) and a Bonpa stronghold. Both tribes you don't want to mess with.
Songpan, was founded as a garrison town guarding the neck of a valley. Songpan is one of Sichuan's few surviving walled towns and is surrounded on three sides by high stone walls, most of them reconstructed. Their shops (unimpressive) still cater to the occasional Tibetan and and local Qiang. The only impressive sight we saw in Songpan was an old bridge. Glad our itinerary didn't call for an overnight there. (Thank you, Cindy.)
old Songpan bridge
Continue reading "Huanglong to Mao Xian (Maoxian) County" »
The Huanglong Reserve covers over a 1,000 square km/600 miles of rough terrain at an average altitude of 3,000m/9,800'. This valley was carved out by a glacier and the limestone-rich waters flowing down the valley have left yellow calcified deposits between hundreds of blue ponds. The entire circuit, on either wooden boardwalks that have to be slippery as hell when it rains and stone paths, is approximately 8k/4+ miles through the deciduous forest, pine forests and rhododendrons. By now, I had forgotten all about the hissy fit on the way to this Reserve. It was definitely worth every long mile and entirely different from Jiuzhaigou. Go and visit!
We walked down from the Monastery on the opposite side of the circuit and gained new perspectives of the 5-Colored Dragon Head pool, Golden Flying Waterfall, 1k long calcified slope "Golden Sand on Earth" ...View image...There were toilets all along the trail and posts offering free oxygen. If we could have read "free oxygen in Chinese", it would have been a sure indication that this was some serious altitude just to go out and walk in. And...duh...seeing a porter struggling up carrying everything Nepal-style would have told anyone with a brain that this was high altitude...
porter carrying cartons on his back up the mountain
Continue reading "Huanglong Scenic Reserve - Going Down" »
It was a very long drive, over 2-1/2 hours from Jiuzhaigou to Huanglong, up and over mountains. Huanglong is a string of lakes and small ponds in a calcified valley with thick alpine forests. Already, I was not happy. The thought of driving this distance just to see another park was leaving me cold and I was busy muttering in the back seat to ex-Marine..."Can you believe we have to drive all this way...and then turn around and drive the same road back through the mountains...yadda...yadda..." At long last there, Huanglong seemed less busy than Jiuzhougou. Probably because there were very few tour buses in the parking lot at this early hour.
Again, there was a big visitor's center at the entrance of Huanglong again in the Minshan range, another UNESCO site...View image... The highest peak Xuebaoding would have been visible on a clear day but today was cool and overcast. Wang-Lee decided to take us in to the park today, and left Yonten in the parking lot with the car. There were no buses into Huanglong - you had to walk in...and up...or so we thought. Fortunately, ex-Marine and I had absolutely no inkling of the altitude here.
Huanglong park entrance
Continue reading "From Jiuzhaigou to Huanglong Scenic Reserve" »
Jiuzhaigou is in the southern part of the Minshan Mountains at an elevation of 2,000-4,300m/6,500-14,000' and is one of the branch gullies at the source of the Jiulingjiang River in the Yangtze River system. This big "Y" shaped valley consists of Nuorilang with the two branches of Rize and Zechawa. There are over 114 lakes and 17 waterfalls...impossible to see everything. Jiuzhaigou Scenic Reserve was designated a UNESCO Man and Biosphere area in 1997. The midpoint of today's gully was called Nuorilang and Fangcao Lake (Primeval Forest) was an additional 18k/10 miles up.
Jumped on the next bus to top (a 20-minute ride) to admire the views from there. Most of the tourists in the park were also paying 30 Yuan to take photos dressed in Tibetan costumes....View image...they were so pretty that I was tempted to dress up in one myself...but we were running short of time and there was still much to see in Jiuzhaigou...
dressing in Tibetan costumes
Continue reading "In Jiuzhaigou Scenic Reserve: Middle To The Top Section" »
Approximately 1,000,000 people visit annually and there were over 15,000 today. "Jewz" means "9 Stockades Gully." It is 14k/8+ miles from park gate to center of reserve, then 15k/9.3 miles to the Primeval Forest at the top from the center. Bus stops all along the route and the routes are divided from bottom to middle and middle to top. It took 20 minutes by bus just to get from the middle to top. There is also a guesthouse at the halfway point to spend the night if you want.
Huge visiters center with everything in Chinese and English. A map cost about 50 cents and was an extremely worthwhile investment....View image...and the visitors center had information flashing by, also in Chinese and English...View image...
map of one route in Jiuzhaigou
Continue reading "In Jiuzhaigou Scenic Reserve: Bottom To The Middle Section" »
Today's destination was Jiu Zhai Gou (Jiuzhaigou) Scenic Reserve for some exploration. Jiuzhaigou is in a valley with lakes and some waterfalls, "discovered" by tourists in the 1970's and is now being groomed by the Chinese Government for a huge influx of visitors (primarily Han Chinese).
Ruo Er Gai was an interesting little town. even if we did nearly freeze to death in our hotel. And breakfast was a Chinese breakfast only, without eggs or bread BUT there was some sort of sponge cake and we had our instant coffee. No worries... Upon arrival yesterday, we walked around town - that took about five minutes - but there were some great looking pedi-cabs, one food street selling lots of candy, nuts and other foods - all sitting out in the very hot high-altitude sun...View image... - and peas drying on the sidewalks...
Ruo Er Gai pedicab
Continue reading "Ruo Er Gai Grassland and Jiu Zhai Gou (Jiuzhaigou)" »
Driving along, Yonten taught us another Tibetan word - DEE MOUCHEE - goodby in Tibetan. It wasn't long before Wang-Lee pulled off the road, drove a short distance across green pastures and stopped before a black tent, Yonten's family summer tent. His mother, sister-in-law and nephew were standing outside waiting to greet us while the family's yaks roamed around and the family dog (a mean one, tied up) growled and barked at us. (Yonten said even he was afraid of that dog.) ...View image...
The black tent made out of yak fur absorbs the sun during the day and keeps the family warm at night. The tent was quite spacious with a spot for everything including a pile of dried yak dung (three-days worth) used as fuel for cooking. They even had a small solar generator. Nomads move their flocks four times n the summer to new pastures, gradually heading back to their winter home by the mountains. It takes several yaks to haul everything each time they move. They also had a little white tent in the middle of the yak corral for someone to sleep in at night to keep away predators.
Yonten, Mother, and nephew
Continue reading "A Day With The Nomads: Ruo Er Gai Grassland" »
Today, if we are lucky, we'll get to witness a Tibertan Sky Burial. When a Tibetan dies, the body is kept in the house for three days, and then brought to the monastery where a monk says prayers over the corpse. After that, the corpse is immediately transported up the mountain and left for the vultures and other birds of prey to dispose of it. Before the birds even get there, a monk splits the corpse into pieces with his knife to make it easier for the vultures to carry off the body chunks. Neither one of us were quite sure whether this was really something to look forward to or not...
Up very early in the morning to hike up the mountain to the Terrace for Celestial Burial (sky burials), the most holy place in the area. The hiking trail was easy...the altitude was not. We asked Yonten while burtials are handled in this fashion. His explanation, during Tibetan life, they eat many animals and birds. This method of disposal gives something back to the animals and the souls of the dead are brought to heaven.
Tibetan Sky Burial site
Continue reading "Langmusi Sky Burials and Ruo Er Gai Grassland" »
We continued on our walk to visit Sezhi Monastery, at the intersection of Gansu Province and Sichuan Province. This little village of Langmusi has two large Tibetan Buddhist monasteries, each with about 600 monks. This is an Amdo Tibetan nomad region and the people are devoutly Buddhist. The first thing we saw were people sitting in front of the very attractive Sezhi Monastery, trying to capture the sights in paint...View image...first one, than another person working on their artwork...View image... And, the next day, we happened to see an entire Chinese art class, palettes and paints in hand, heading for the same spot.
We'd visit the other monastery, Geerdeng Monastery, in Gansu Province tomorrow on the way up to a Tibetan Sky Burial. (More about Tibetan Sky Burials later...) Locals simply refer to them as the Sichuan Monastery and Gansu Monastery.
artist's rendition
Continue reading "The Monasteries of Langmusi" »
Langmusi was another beautiful village, populated by Hui, Goloks and Tibetans, surrounded by mountains and lamaseries. There is really good hill walking around here as well as horse-rides into the country. Quite a few Chinese tourists like to rent horses, ride to a nomad village where they spend a night in a tent, and ride back the next day. Langmusi is a very relaxing, Tibetan area and many travelers organize treks or just veg out for a few days.
We arrived in Langmusi just around lunch time, dropped the suitcases at the hotel, walked down the street and upstairs to a restaurant Wang-Lee knew. The food wasn't very good. Wang=Lee said this restaurant was excellent the last time he drove through Langmusi, but this time, a big Julia Child thumbs down . We all should have known this place wasn't for us when we saw the street sign, advertising intestines for lunch...
Sheeps' Intestines for lunch
Continue reading "The Mountains and Attractions of Langmusi" »
Now going south of Gansu Province to Hezuo ("WHO-ZOO") to visit Mila Riba Palace, on a sunny, nice day. Built in 1777, this 14-storey temple was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution and rebuilt in 1988. Quite elaborate with great views of the grasslands surrounding Hezuo. There are over 1,700 statues of Buddha, Bodhisattva and guardians of Buddhism. We just admired from the outside.
Hezuo is a trading post for Tibetan nomads. The road leading to Sichuan from Gansu Province was a tough journey with lots of stopovers in remote towns. A new Tibetan word for us "KAY-OH-MARI"...."no problem" in Tibetan. Yonten is responsible for this new word. He attends university in Lanzhou trying to improve his Chinese and English. In today's China, a person must be fluent in Chinese if they want to get ahead and Yonten has no intention of returning to the nomadic life of his family, herding yaks and sheep for the rest of his life. The Lanzhou University has 40,000 studens and four months equals one term.
another monastery tucked at the foot of the mountains
Continue reading "Xiahe (Labrang), Through Hezuo, On The Way To Langmusi" »
We had visited Gansu province during the Silk Road trip but were heading into an entirely different area. Xiahe (pronounced shak huh - the Chinese world for "Labrang") is the most important Tibetan monastery town outside of Tibet. (I'm going to use Xiahe throughout this article.) Xiahe is a tiny rural town around 3,000m/9,800' in the hills of southern Gansu, on the edge of the Tibetan plateau. The town basically runs along one small street starting from the bus station, leading through Labrang Monastery in the middle, and ending in the old Tibetan section of town.
Labrang Monastery is one of the six major centers of the Gelugpa (Yellow Hat Sect). Four are in Tibet and we had already visited the fifth, Kumbum (Taer Si) in Qinghai Province. This temple, with its 600+ year history, is famous for ancient cultural relics and architecture. The Yellow Hat Sect is considerably wealthier than their brother monks of the Red Hat Sect (Hongjiao Si - Temple of the Red Hat Sect - also in Xiahe), and the Yellow Hat people certainly never looked undernourished... Speaking of undernourished...it was time for lunch...and we were getting pretty darn good with chopsticks...
another yummy lunch
Continue reading "Xia He/Xiahe/Labrang County and Monastery in Gansu Province" »
This was the big Day...the reason we were visiting Tongren in Qinghai Province at this particular time. The Shen Wu Assembly for Worship, in only held once a year..TODAY. This Assembly, called "Zhou Pu Le Rou" in Tibetan language, is a traditional old Ritual Festival incorporating religion, sacrifice and entertainment. Some of the numerous ceremonies and activities include: ritual dances, the beating of holy drums, singing of folk songs and the shaman going into trance all hoping to bring good luck for future offerings.
It is more correctly called the Tongren Shaman's Festival dating back to pre-Buddhist influence. After today, the festival would continue in many of the small villages around Tongren presided over by each village's local shaman. There would also be ritual piercing of cheeks of all the young men in the village, the men dancing a drum dance with pierced backs, and a shaman in a trance, climbing the dragon pole, then cutting his forehead with a knife. Quite wild and very different from any festival we've ever experienced. Don't know about the piercing and cutting bits, and just hoped we had the stomach for it.
making festival preparation
Continue reading "Tongren (Tong Ren) Aboriginal Assembly" »
- Approximately 31% of the Chinese smoke (could be much higher). Very difficult to get used to constantly being surrounded by a cloud of second-hand smoke. We've probably inhaled a year's worth of smoke in just a few days. If you are a smoker, China will be nirvana and you'll be happier than a hog sitting in a puddle of ...you know what....just puff away to your heart's content...
- Spitting on the sidewalks has diminished since prior visits to China. Do you think SARS or Bird Flu had something to do with it?
- You can buy some great looking sunglasses for $1.
- The Tibetans love to have their pictures taken and a crowd always materializes to see the image on my digital camera and camcorder. They are also as interested in us as we are in them.
Mongolian man
Continue reading "Some Random China Thoughts" »
Our hotel (the China Telecom) was packed with both Chinese National tourists and westerners arriving for the festival tomorrow including one group that just came off trek. Their mules were munching away behind the hotel waiting to be carted off to wherever mules go. We'll have to walk about 15 minutes from the center of Tongren to the monastery uphill. It should start at 10:00 am, and then again, maybe not.
The China Telecom Hotel had its own bowling alley but didn't serve breakfast or any other meals which certainly wasn't a problem. Each morning we walked less than 100 feet to a little hole in the wall restaurant with, perhaps, six tiny tables seating 4 persons at each table. If an entire table wasn't vacant, we just ate with strangers...it wasn't like they took "reservations." This restaurant was operated by Chinese Muslims, the Hui people, a completely family-run affair. Little boy poured tea and cleaned off tables while another family member made the noodles and a third took orders and delivered the food to the table. Breakfast was either a huge bowl of meat/vegetable/noodle soup - what Wang-Lee and Yonten ate or, hard-boiled eggs and flatbread - our breakfast - supplemented with a jar of Nescafe coffee.
Tongren breakfast restaurant
Continue reading "More Tongren Sights and Monasteries" »
Finally in Tongren, Qinghai Huangnan Tibetan Autonomous Region, the focal point of this trip, to attend the Tongren festival supposed to start today with two-days of festivities. BUT...the Head Lama has decided that today is not an auspicious day and the festival won't start until tomorrow. Ah...memories of our Ladakh trip when we planned three weeks around a huge festival, arrived and found out that the festival had taken place weeks earlier when that Lama changed it to a more auspicious time! What could we do but hope that it actually would begin tomorrow...
In the meantime, there were other sights to see. Tongren (pop. 16,000) had two other monasteries not far away. Upper Wutun Xia and Lower Wutun. This area is also known for its Tangkas/Thangkas, a unique form of painting in Tibet. It was off to the monastery to learn a litttle about Thangkas. It is usually a painted or embroidered Buddhist banner hung in a monastery or family altar and carried in ceremonial processions. In Tibetan, the word 'than' means flat and the suffix 'ka' stands for painting. A Thangka can be rolled up when not required for display.
Originally, Thangka painting became popular among traveling monks because the scrolls could be easily rolled and transported from monasteries.
Continue reading "In Tongren (Tong Ren) Known As The "Homeland of Thangkas"" »
It was time for the serious road trip to begin. It would be a three hour drive before arriving in Tongren, the hometown of the Tibetan Re Gona Culture and also a center for art. On the way, we passed through Ping An County and attempted to visit Hong Ya Gou (Red Cliff Village) to visit the 14th Dalai Lama's Former Residence. Even though the 14th Dalai Lama's government in exile is in India, he still has a few "Scotch Cousins" living in the village. It was not to be. The Chinese were busy working on a new road that made it too difficult to get there. No problem.
Onward... It was surprising to see so many Chinese Muslims in Qinghai Province. I couldn't get any definitive answer where they originally migrated from...Pakistan? Afghanistan? One of the Stans? But there were approximately 12,000 Chinese Muslims in this province.
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