Stuff I wish I had done in Hong Kong:
Taken the Star Ferry
Met Jackie Chan

This is a wax figure of Jackie. I carried a martial arts magazine featuring Jackie all through China in hopes that I could get him to autograph it. When I returned to the US, he was on the Letterman show in NYC. Figures.
I finally talked Charlotte into going to Victoria Peak. We took the tram to the top. The views are spectacular here.
A lot of tourists probably just get to the top and shop in the malls then go back down, but Charlotte and I discovered the 2.5 kilometer nature trail that goes all the way around the peak.
It was glorious. HUGE butterflies and moths swooped right over our heads. We saw squirrels, birds , bamboo, tea plants, and banana trees. VERY wealthy people live here. (Not Jackie - he lives on Kowloon). The gates and razor wire around their driveways make it clear that these houses are not part of the tour.
This morning in Hong Kong I woke early and went down to the park across the street from our hotel to join the taichi'ers. An elderly couple welcomed me into their exercise and showed me what to do. I bowed my thanks when they finished and they grinned and bowed back and waved. Lovely people.

Home tomorrow! Oh frabjous day! We have loved this trip, but we miss home and family.

Back to Hong Kong

We realized that with the constraints of the IDEA conference schedule, that we hadn't done much sightseeing in Hong Kong. We flew back from Beijing instead of taking the train. No more trains! Air China was great, BTW. Travel arrangements are weird in China. You have to pay for everything in cash. So you book your train or flight and then trot across the street to the Bank of China and sign over your travelers checks or your debit if your bank will clear you for that much in one go and then trot back to the travel office with your RMB 4500 or whatever and pay up. It's nerve-racking at times because you can't do it much in advance (4 days or less) and you've made hotel reservations and other plans that are time sensitive. That was the worst part of the trip -- the not having all my tickets in hand from the get-go. Hong Kong to China and vice versa counts as international travel which complicates things too.
We popped back to Kowloon and found the flower market and the bird market. Amazing. Blocks of flower shops with giant fronds and tiny bonsai that ran into a little side street where cages of colorful and sweet singing birds are hung and stacked. I saw one lady heading home with 2 covered cages. The wild sparrows come visit the caged birds. Are they teasing them or just looking for the free food? Markets are the thing here. Food markets, bird markets, flower markets, and souvenier markets are part of the tourist attactions.


We were so glad to be back in Hong Kong where we could easily maneuver around the city on the MTR. I should have had a little more cash in HK dollars though to get from the airport. It was nearly HK$400, and I only had HK$300. So I had to run into the hotel and change a US$20 to pay the taxi. We would have taken the MTR from the airport if it hadn't been for the enormous amount of luggage we had. The regular commuters would have hated us!

That afternoon we went back to Pacific Coffee Company and noticed a big sign on the bar across the street (made famous in some James Bond movie) saying, "Welcome to Hong Kong, U.S. Navy!" That's why I heard so many American accents as I walked to the bank.

July 30 Last day in Beijing

What I wish I had done in Beijing: Eaten at the night market. Taken the subway. Had a closer look at the venues for the Olympics. Beijing is immense. The city limits are 105 miles going from the north to the south. It's hard to figure out where you are going. We relied on cab drivers and little cards from our hotel with the addresses written on them in Mandarin.
We were always seeing sights through a haze of pollution. This was a sunny day in Tiananmen Square. Charlotte loved it here. Sometimes there are still protests here. I kept remembering 1989, but there are also happy families wandering around and kids flying kites. The hawkers were aggressive, and our guide, Sarah complimented me on how patient I was with them as I wave my hand, smiled, and shook my head -- never stopping my forward movement. That's why I have so few pictures from Tiananmen Square. The little girl in the garden at the Forbidden City who wanted to have her picture taken with the foreigners. We agreed in return for a picture with her and her mother. She practiced her English with me. It was a lot better than my Chinese! She was darling, but we encountered several unruly kids in China too. Maybe when there is only one kid allowed per family, parents become a little too lenient.
On our last day in Beijing, Charlotte and I went guideless and slept in. We went to the kite store in the hutong area and then back to the Temple of Heaven Park where we just walked quietly through the gardens and watched the people who watched us. The little neighborhoods and parks here are very appealing and a welcome respite from the enormity of the city
We had dinner on our last night with classmate, Maxi and her mom, Chris who had been at a conference on American poetry featuring Langston Hughes! Maxi got up and read a poem by Emily Dickenson at the closing session. They are off to another conference on American poetry in Japan! Apparently American poets are really big here. Who knew?
You know what the coolest thing about Beijing is? The retired people gather in the parks and little neighborhoods and do neat stuff together. The men play board games, and the women dance and twirl ribbons. They have little musical groups together, and they look happy and healthy. That's what I'd like to do when I retire.

More Peking Opera

Charlotte and I were both enthralled with the Peking Opera and spent the extra bucks for closer seats the next night. We sat at a table where waiters fip a long spouted teapot around like a perfrmance bartender and had snacks to nibble on throughout the performance. To our right was a table of women from the Yucatan, and we shared our table with a lovely couple from Japan and a pair of schoolteachers who it turned out live right across the border from us in Hamilton, Ontario! You never know who you'll meet in Beijing! Last night, Charlotte bumped into Maxie from her class who was traveling with her mother as well!
The musicians are offstage during the performance, but they demonstrated their instruments beforehand.
We saw a heart-rending scene from "The Emperor bids farewell to his concubine" (remember the movie?) Charlotte cried - So did the guy playing the king. The Mexican ladies sitting to our right laughed at first because the singing sounded so peculiar to them. One of them was translating the English subtitles into Spanish for the others. During the Concubine's dance to entertain the king, I saw her slap one hand into the other, palms up and stamp one foot. This meant she had come to a major decision. She danced with swords - a none to subtle foreshadowing of her eventual suicide.
The uproariously funny "Monkey King wreaks havoc on the dragon palace". The Monkey King brought the house down. A few years ago, I directed a play that included this story. This was better! The Dragon King thinks he has outwitted the Monkey, but the Monkey King is just biding his time before stealing an unbeatable weapon.
Everybody loves the Monkey King. The actors bowed at the end by putting their left fist or fingertips into their right palms depending on the personality of their character.

Peking Opera

As I said earlier in this blog, we saw the Children's Cantonese Opera perform a scene from "The Legend of White Snake" while we were in Hong Kong. We also attended two performances by the Peking Opera Company in Beijing. Again in Beijing, it was just scenes because a full Chinese opera can take 3 hours per section and several evenings to perform a whole story. Still, it was both entertaining and educational to see these scenes preceded by an introduction by an emcee and a demonstration of the musical instruments.
Traditonal Chinese opera is a feast for the eyes if at times a surprise to untrained Western ears. It is characterized by brilliantly colored costumes often with elaborate embroidery, symbolic gestures and a symbolic use of props. Sometimes the actors wear costumes with very long sleeves that they hold and move in symbolic ways. There is little if any scenery onstage, and the actors describe through song and movement where they are. The actors sing with such elongated vowels that even the Chinese need a libretto. Nowadays the libretto is projected on screens above or beside the stage. Many plays include impressively choreographed fight scenes using a variety of martial arts techniques.
Photos without a flash are allowed and even encouraged both outside and during the performance. There are tables in the front of the house near the stage and regular seating farther back. The tables have food on them, and I recall that in many forms of Asian theatre the audience eats throughout the show. A waiter with a long-spouted teapot entertains the incoming spectators by juggling the pot around like a performance bartender before pouring. There are translation devices available, but I find it too distracting during the performance and give it up.

We were surprised to see the actors putting on their makeup when we entered the foyer. The makeup colors and patterns often identify the characterand have clues to their personality. Black means integrity and loyalty, red means a fiery personality, full white-face means cold hearted and mean, gold indicates immortality. Imagine a Broadway star putting on her/his face in full view of the audience! I've seen this willingness to instruct in performances of Japanese traditional theatre too however. There's a respect for history and a need to pass on the knowledge here.
On the first night we saw scenes from "Surveying the Battle Array" and "Green Snake robs the National Bank". The first was a story from the Three Kingdom Wars, I think. Two warriors are in disguise fleeing an evil general. They hold tasseled sticks out indicating that they are on horseback. They wear platform shoes, and one of them balances and slowly twirls on one foot as he looks for their enemies. We both wished that we could have seen more of this opera. We wanted to see what became of these two characters.
The second half of the bill was a humorous excerpt from my favorite tale, Legend of White Snake." White Snake has sent her faithful servant, Green Snake, to rob the bank to give money to help her create an herbal medicine shop to help the poor. Green Snake and her spirit assistants outwit two clown characters and defeat the greedy banker. They fly off with the loot to the delight of the audience.

Temple of Heaven

The Temple of Heaven Park. The retired people gather here for tai chi, dancing, making music, and in this case playing with ribbons.
Whoops! I should have rotated this before uploading it! Tip to the right to see the place where the emperor would go to pray for a good harvest. I between the stairs were reliefs of dragons and phoenixes. Gorgeous.
A peek inside. It's hard to see through the crowds.
I missed part of our guide's description because of all the noise. After fasting and praying for a good harvest in the wintertime, I think the emperor went to this end in the summertime and they made animal sacrifices to the gods. This huge dais has three tiers. In the center of the top tier is a disc. If you stand here and whisper (when there aren't a bunch of people making noise) you can be heard at the other end of the complex. Cool.
The view from the top. The Chinese use a lot of gates. Beijing is gated, the Forbidden City is gated, neighborhoods have gates, houses have gates, temples have gates. You're never quite sure if you are in or out...

July 29

Today we started at the Beijing Zoo where we saw the pandas - They are breeding them and then introducing the young into the wild in Setzuan.
Then we saw the summer palace where the Dowager Empress "Sissy" (Spelling?) kept her nephew a virtual prisoner. This is the man-made lake there. This was built in the 1840's.
This is a long corridor painted with scenes of famous Chinese stories. Our guide (today it's Mandy - really Wei Bin) told us some of the stories and then e-mailed some more to me. What a glorious place. I want to repaint our entire home interior in blue, gree, gold and red with scenes of all my favorite stories on the windows and crown molding.
The marble boat that was used for operas and concerts. Our guide felt it necessary to tell us that it wouldn't float...
We had lunch at a Setzuan restaurant -- too spicy for Charlotte, but I loved it-- and then saw the fresh water pearl fatcory next door. You can set up the oysters so that you can get 15-20 pearls out of each one - That's one reason they are so much cheaper than those from the sea. Spent too much again, but I've finished all my Christmas shopping - hint hint!
The pollution in this city really starts to get to you. Charliotte picked up a sore throat, and our guide helped us communicate with a pharmacy because that's the one drug I didn't pack! we got a real inside look at the Buddhist religion today at the Lama Temple because our new guide is a practioner. So we lit incense and said prayers of our own. My slacks were filthy from the ashes that we knelt in! I don't have my own photos of this because it's a working temple. However, they give you a little disc of pictures with your ticket in. If I can just figure out what to load it in, I can download them!

July 28

Yesterday we started with a children's puppet show. Not shadow puppets - more like Japanese bunraku with almost life-sized puppets and the puppeteers in full view. Charlotte hated the insipid voices, but the guide and I loved it. Definitely some techniques my students can use.
We buzzed off to the silk factory where we again spent too much money, but so much of what we are seeing can't be found anywhere but here. We actually watched women stretching out the cocoons of the silk worms onto a quilt or rolling single threads onto bobbins. Incredible!
The Forbidden City was so much bigger than I thought it would be. Part is under restoration, but we saw gobs of it, and the movie "The Last Emperor" kept coming to mind as I saw room after room that I recognized.

The gardens at the Forbidden City have raised pebble areas to massage the feet of the concubines. Felt good!

Had lunch at a noodle house, and I asked to buy some of the sauce for Ken, but it needed refrigeration; so we passed. On to the vast Tainnamen Square where Chinese people kept asking our guide if they could have their pictures taken with us. First an old couple, then a group of young men (Charlotte was certainly the attraction here) and then a little girl who was mastering her first English lessons. So sweet. The hawkers are ravenous here, and you have to keep moving constantly.

The Hutongs

A regular entrane flanked with cheery wishes from New Year's Day.
Our chiffon-clad guide explains this ornate entrance belonging to an important military official. The 4 posts above the door mean a big shot and the drumshaped stones flanking the base of the door mean military official. The high thresholds keep out water and also short ghosts! Tall ghosts can get over them, but there's usually a screen just inside, and tall ghosts can't turn sideways to get around it.
Lovely courtyard owned by a resident of the hutongs. There were several bird cages, fountains, and grasshopper cages. The grasshoppers were huge. Apparently, they are popular pets.
The interior of her home. She had Chinese opera photos on the walls - soul mate!
Same residence. It had several rooms including a kitchen with a fridge.

July 27

At the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall - fewer tourists, more wall.
We walked from that farthest misty peak.
At the cloisonne factory.
More of the hutongs follow in the next post. It's hard to grasp this place.
Charlotte expertly wraps her Peking duck in a mandarin pancake using only chopsticks!

What a packed day we have had here since hooking up with our guide. Sarah Peng reserved a car and driver for us, and we sped out of this enormous city to the Great Wall. We didn't go to the section that all the tourists go to, although there were several groups at the section farther out of the city, we could actually see the wall. We walked for about an hour, then turned back when the steps seemed to go staright up! Thank the lord we took the cable car up or I would have never made it to the wall in the first place. The views were breathtaking, and it's overwhelming to see the scope of the structure. We took way too many pictures just like my colleague, Larry, said we would! I was panting so much that I hyperventilated and it took an hour before the numbness left my hands.

We had a delicious lunch in a tea house beside the cloisonne factory and then a tour that gave us the whole process followed by a trip to the show room. The artistry meant all the more having just seen how the items were made. We had a rest in the car on the way back to the city and passed the "birds nest" stadium designed for the Olympics. Stunning.

Then we toured the hutongs by rickshaw. Couldn't believe that any one would live in these tiny bungalows accessible only through winding alleys and many without toilets. That's why there are a ton of public toilets throughout the complex, but Charlotte discovered that they are squat toilets (no seats) and have no doors either! However, after an explanation of the symbolism on the doors to the various bungalows (involving various ways to keep both short and tall demons out) we saw the interior of a beautiful home complete with its own courtyard that had birds and pet grasshoppers in cages. The shrine to Buddha in the front room welcomed us along with pictures of various photos of Beijing Opera stars. It seems the woman who owns this place is as big a fan of Beijing Opera as I. I'm so glad we saw the hutongs because so many of them are being torn down to make way for Olympic venues, and it is such a loss of Old Beijing.

That night we had a real Peking duck dinner at a "first rate" restaurant. Delightful.

July 26

After another yucky train ride (it would probably be fun with a bunch of buddies including at least one who could speak Chinese really well!) we arrived in Beijing at the Holiday Inn. Like Zhengzhou, this is mostly a business hotel. Although we don't feel that the locals are staring so much at us (neither here nor in Zhengzhou) the businessmen seem surprised at two women traveling alone. It brings occasional discomfort although nothing overt is said or done. Charlotte noted with dismay that there are condoms with the mini-bar accessories here. Kind of inappropriate for a room for a mother and daughter. Makes one wonder what kind of establishment they are running here. On the other hand, it looks just like a very swish Holiday Inn.

More Longmen Caves

The Longmen caves from the water, a tributary of the Yellow River.

Our guide spoke with great pride of the history of the Henan region. This is where the Qin emperor tamed the flooding of the river and consolidated his power. Many Chinese come here to study their geneology. The city of Zhengzhou grew from 100,000 people to over 6 million in just a few years recently, and is a huge business center.