Tuesday, September 11 (Ken)

The Three Gorges Dam site was almost too immense to fully comprehend, and was certainly too big to take in all at once.  The main part of the dam in the middle of the river gets lost in the haze and the maze of cranes and formwork.  The part that most impressed me was driving over the future ship locks -- two channels with sheer sides several hundred feet deep.

The trip up the river (and later back down) was a new perspective on our visit to China thus far.  Rather than simply using it to barge freight and materials (as in the US), the Chinese use the Yangtze as a highway between the cities and villages up and down the river.  Unfortunately, they also appear to use the river as a means of waste disposal...lots of visible trash (for some reason I noticed lots of styrofoam and shoes), and it looked like all the toilets on the boats flushed straight into the water.

The river was also apparently high because of recent storms in the west.  It was extremely turbid, carrying tons and tons of soil from hundreds of miles away.  The velocity of the water was quite high, especially in the more confined areas in the gorges.  There were impressive whirlpools and eddies all along.  I came to China in hopes of swimming in the Yangtze, but after seeing (a) the pollution and (b) the treacherous current, I knew there was no way I'd get in the river.  But I did get to swim in a small tributary (before the Tujan boat trip), a few miles upstream of the mainstream Yangtze.

On the drive through the mountains to get to the starting point of our Tujan boat ride, we saw how extensively the people farm the mountains...terraces extending far up the mountain walls.  Villages and homes in places one would never expect.  From Hong Kong all the way to Yichang and now in Huangshan, it's dawned on me that there are a lot mountains here.  We did drive through/fly over some flat areas around Wuhan, and as we drove down the freeway to Wuhan, I thought the landscape there looked a lot like Illinois.

In Fengjie, our group of 12 were the only Westerners in town.  Apparently, Intrepid is the only group to visit lately, as we were quite the curiosity parading off the boat, up the river steps, and up the narrow streets to our hotel.  People would stop and point us out to their kids; as everywhere else, we felt quite welcome here.

Also in Fengjie, probably the most remote non-tourish place we'll visit, I realized my earlier journal entry was in error.  The Western (or at least capitalist) influence is far from reduced as we've progressed into China.  People buy, sell, and advertise everything.  Unfortunately, most of it is junk.  Every third or fourth vendor sells the same stuff.  Despite the tattered infrastructure, most young people seem to lead, or at least aspire to, what we would consider to be a middle class life.  They dress in neat Western style clothes, and it seems most of the young people have cell phones.

We went to the disco in our hotel in Fengjie.  When we went in, they were playing loud, fast, electronic music.  The dance floor was pretty crowded...people were moving in something of a line dance, not really moving their arms or hips.  Then they played a long set of slow stuff, and nobody danced.  When the music sped up, nobody got back on the dance floor, and after a few minutes, a guy came over and asked us to dance.  Michelle, Heidi, and I got up, while Mel and Jon watched.  We got out there and got down a little, with only the guy who invited us on the dance floor, and three other women standing way off to the side, half-heartedly giving it a go.  Nobody else joined us out there... I wonder if they were all sitting there in horror.

There was a 5" spider in our room in the Fengjie hotel, which came scurrying out when the attendant came in to close the curtains.  We pointed at it, she gave us a blank look, and left.  After we sat there watching it in the corner of the ceiling, debating whether to throw something at it or hope it would go back to wherever it came from, the security guard came into the room with a long-handled duster, knocked the spider off the ceiling, and after some frenzied scurrying by the spider and the room attendant, the security guard calmly smacked the spider off the wall with his bare hand and then stomped on it.  The attendant then swept it up and they left.

In Yichang, we all went out to eat one evening at a cheap noodle place.  They had the assortment of meats and veggies that we could point to for the cook to add to our noodles.  We weren't sure what all they add-ins were.  I asked for something I thought was mushrooms, but once I started eating them, could feel it was some sort of animal product.  After I was finished eating, I drew pictures of several different animals (pig, cow, chicken, snake, dog) and brought it up front to one of the cooks, pointed at the drawing, and then pointed at the mystery meat.  He pointed at the pig, then at his belly, and made a long stretching motion with his hands.  I had just eaten pig intestines.  They weren't bad, really.  Kinda chewy and spicy.

Tuesday, September 11 (Mel):  In the Huangshan mountains

Huangshan to the Chinese people is like Mecca to Muslims.  It is the goal of every Chinese person to go to Huangshan at least once in their lifetime.  Huangshan is the place that is painted, poeticized, romanticized, and swarming with thousands of visitors a day.  Fortunately, it is a place of hundreds of mountains, hundreds of thousands of steps, and mist to separate everyone and everything.

The plan is to eat breakfast at the hotel, go to the cable car up the mountain, hike a bit, go back to town, internet or whatever, group dinner at 7:30pm.  Great plan, I'm roaring to go at 6:30am, and as I was brushing my teeth -- WHAM!!!  Doubled over in pain.  Food poisoning, which causes the stomach and lower organs to cramp up in pain.  Every move, every motion results in pain.  When Ken left to join the group for the day's outing, I was curled up in the bed, begging for sleep or painkillers.  I took one of the magic pills the Travel Clinic gave me, and woke up 5 hours later.  Ann and Laurel returned from the mountains, and Mr. Hu was going to take them rafting.  Since I was feeling 200% better, then I joined them.

Mr. Hu is the local guide.  He and his wife run a small shop which serves food and offers info in English.  He sets up excursions for the day and is good at haggling prices.  He arranged for us to go up and down the river in a bamboo raft, plus transportation for 35 yuan ($4.25).  The water was pleasant, the scenery peaceful, and the raft didn't sink.  I was pleased.  Imagine Ken's surprise when he leaves me curled up in pain, and comes back to a note that states "gone rafting".

Village at outskirts of Huangshan

After rafting I spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening with Grant.  Dinner was at 7:30pm at the restaurant/post office down the road.  We had the worst beef but the best mandarin fish.  It was like a sweet-n-sour sauce, but with mandarin orange for the "sweet" and rice vinegar for the "sour".  After dinner we played mahjong at the cafe.  In the middle of the game, Jon came to the cafe and told Heidi that NYC and WashingtonDC was bombed.  We finished the game, went upstairs, and watched TV in horror for 3 hours.

Wednesday, September 12 (Mel):  The little girl at the internet

CNN and Fox News are banned in China, yet the CCTV (Chinese main stations) get their footage from CNN.  All we know is four planes crashed into various sites in the US.  Jon and Heidi stayed up all night trying to contact their families in DC and NYC.  They weren't successful.  We dropped them off in the main town, so that they could try email.

Today I had no food poisoning!  So in celebration, I painted my toenails and wore lipstick to spite Ardith.

We went to Mr. Hu's place for breakfast, then saw the snow monkeys.  We had another 290 steps to the top, where they put you in an open cage, and then the monkeys come up to the cage.  Not a problem, however, two of the monkeys took issue with Darren and was trying to attack him.

                                                   
                                        Snow monkey mountains                                                                                                                Snow monkey

After the monkeys we went to a tea ceremony.  The girl had this ceremonial thing she did with the water, the tea cups, the tea, how she poured, etc.  After drinking the five different teas (including the one that is picked only once every 7 years), we got the hard sell for the teas.

We toured a small village, then ate lunch at Mr. Hu's.  Most everyone else went to the hotel.  Ken went with me to the east cable cars which lead to the Huangshan mountains.  I was really nervous going up to the peak of the mountains.  We hiked around a few kilometers, then back down in the cable car.

                   
                                Mel in Huangshan house                                                                                                    Peppers drying in the sun

For these Huangshan mountains, imagine huge rock mountains, where bamboo trees grow from the cracks, along the rhododendron and bonsai-looking pine trees.  Then cover it with mist.  That would be these mountains.  Oh -- and cover the entire range with a gazillion steps carved into the stone by monks.  It took the monks hundreds of years to do the steps.

I have decided that, after climbing yet another gazillion steps today, that China is one big Stairmaster.

Mel at Huangshan mountains

We got back to town and headed immediately to the internet shop.  It's 4 yuan/hour (50 cents/hour).  We logged on to our hotmail account, expecting news from home, but NO!!!  Ya'll were lame.  No one wrote us to tell us about the horror back home.  So we had to cruise newspaper sites, hoping they weren't blocked by the censors.  We managed to get the Seattle Times (apparently the Chinese government does not consider the Times-PI a threat).  While doing email, this little girl with a ponytail came running up to us, and then two other little boys.  They all said "hello ni hau".  The oldest boy was called home to dinner, but the girl was handed rice and sprouts.  She ate this while absorbed with watching us type on the computers.  She would giggle, and the little boy had this strange gift:  he repeated everything we said in English.  It was almost perfect English, and yet he didn't understand a single word he was saying, except for "hello".  The little girl left, then came back without her ponytail.  I pointed to the top of her head and asked "what happened to your ponytail?"  While sitting in the chair next to me, she demonstrated, without a word, how her mother wet her hair, shampooed it, rinsed it, then combed it out.  I was flabbergasted.  She's only three years old.  And the little boy was repeating what I said during her demonstration.

                   
                                                Little girl at internet cafe                                                                                                  Ken checking his work email!

We ate our way through little shops, then headed out of the market.  We ran into Kitty and Robert.  They four of us started walking out of town towards the hotel, then finally fond a taxi service run by two female cousins (you don't see female taxi drivers very often).

We packed tonight and head to some hotel by the lake tomorrow.

Jon and Heidi said no one in their family was killed by the DC/NYC explosions.

We are safer here in China than our family/friends back in the States.

Thursday, September 13 (Mel):  Ken and the chicken head.

This morning I called Housekeeping to borrow the blowdryer again.  She said "no".  I replied "What do you mean no???  I borrowed it yesterday!"  Long pause.  "What is your room number?"  I gave her the room number and a girl came up 5 minutes later with the blowdryer.  In celebration, I wore lipstick to spite Ardith.

We headed out at 8:30am for a long drive to Hangshou in a bus that was too small for our group.  The windows rattle all over the bus, so we tore out pages from a magazine, folded them, and stuck them in the cracks of the windows.  That did the job.

Our bus driver just screams through the country roads, around the bends of the mountains, and through the villages.  Anne wondered out loud what the fine is in China for killing a pedestrian.

Centuries-old pagoda outside of Huangshan

At 12:30pm, we stopped at this roadside noodle place.  By 1pm we were on our way, soon to be on an official highway.  The closer to Hangshou we got, the warmer it got.  And the houses changed.  They were the prettiest we've seen, with decorated roofs, shiny clay tile, and ornate railing on the porch.  We reached Hangshou around 3:30pm.

Don't remember if I mentioned this before, but the Chinese are very organized.  Everything is stacked up or in neat piles.  Even the garbage is in neat little piles.  Sure, it may be on the side of the road or on the sidewalk, but it's in piles.  Mom would love the organization of this culture.

The other thing about this country is the honking.  They honk at everything.  Honk when passing.  Honk when approaching people.  Honk when going around mountain bends.  Honk in tunnels.  Eric would hate this country.

Hangshou is the cultural capital of China, akin to St. Petersburg in Russia.  So many old buildings and even new buildings with fancy architecture.  The sidewalks are tiles with motifs.  Marble all over.  Our hotel overlooks the lake, called Westlake.  It's about twice the size of Greenlake in Seattle.  They built a walkway through the middle of the lake, so pedestrians and cyclists wouldn't have to go all the way around the lake.  Our hotel is the official hotel for foreigners.  We went in search of the internet, couldn't find it, and gave up.  We joined the group for dinner at a swanky restaurant.  One of the dishes is called "beggar's chicken".  It's chicken wrapped in banana leaves, and cooked until tender.  Actually, it's a whole chicken.  "Whole" as in head and all.  And guess what Ken decided to try?

Fortunately, I was finished with dinner, because when Ken put that chicken head in his mouth, my stomach turned 180 degrees.  The rest of the group said "ewwww....."

We ended dinner with a surprise cake for Ted.  It's his birthday today, and he turned 70.

After dinner we went in search of the internet, was fruitless, and decided to use the hotel internet.  (The internet in town is 3 yuan/hour, hotel is 15 yuan/hour.)  We received messages about the NYC/DC bombings.  My sister said the effects are rearing their ugly head; her kids (who are half-Persian) are already being taunted at school and being called terrorists.

Mom echoed the same sentiment I expressed to Ken this morning -- the America we left is not the same America we'll return to.

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Next segment: 

Buddha temples galore,
the room of 1000 monks,
Ken in heaven at KFC,
Chinese grammy awards,
going to the big city of Shanghai...

mkadenko/01.01.02