China

Yichang & Yangtse Dam

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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As we were checking into our hotel, Joe Peng, 30-something young entrepreneur that was with us on our trip up the little gorges showed up with four of his travelling friends: “Most young people like me are in business. I am in charge of sales for a Christmas tree company and I also own my own business. Our sales keep going up…we can’t figure out how so many people could want so many fiber optic trees!” Nine foot trees go to distributors for $80 who then sell them to hotels and other businesses all over the world for $900. His boss for 8 years was Canadian and now his English is great so we jumped at the chance to go with Joe and his friends in a van back to the construction site.

The Construction Site
In 1995, when Winchester wrote his book, the journey from Yichang to the construction site took four hours. The road vanished after five miles and was replaced by a track clogged with every kind of construction vehicle, van, bus, taxi, tractor, crane, backhoe, bulldozer, motorcycle and ricksha imaginable, he says. The giant expressway that carried our bus for the 40 minute journey to the site was just being built halfway up the mountainside. Winchester was able to walk unescorted among the giant bulldozers and excavators, to talk to workers who slept in tents near their work sites. Some 20,000 workers toiled on the site and by the end of 1996 there was 35,000 many of whom were soldiers…some said to be prisoners, laboring on the project at no cost.

When we decided to visit the site this is what I had pictured. But all that is available to the traveller now is a viewing site on Zhongbao Island between the dam and the locks…China requiring each Yichang city Number 8 bus load, or “tour group,” to be accompanied by a “tour leader” that does nothing except ride along. The concrete has been poured and the locks are nearly finished and will be in operation by June of this year although the entire reservoir behind the dam won’t be completely filled until 2009.

The Controversy
The dam has it’s detractors…Dai Qing, a journalist trained as an engineer, earned herself a 10 month spell in prison for her outspoken book “Chang Jiang, Chang Jiang” that was published just a few months before the student uprising that culminated in the Tiananmen Square tragedy in Beijing. Dai was appalled at the risky business of building the dam and throughout the late eighties she carefully collected a series of academic papers by well-respected engineers and hydrologists, each of whom had competent, well-argued and sound reasons for opposing the dam.

Within months, according to Simon Winchester in his “The River At The Centre Of The World,” all of China’s elite and intelligentsia knew of the risks of the monster project. In 1992 nearly 180 men and women from what was called the Democratic Youth Party in Kaixian country were reportedly taken away by police and charged with sabotage and counter-revolutionary activity relating to their opposition to the dam. According to Winchester they have not been heard of since.

Friends of the Earth has said the dam will create a 480km long septic tank backing up clear to Chongquin. The rising water will cover countless cultural artefacts at over 8000 archaeological sites, many of which have not yet been properly studied. But almost all the criticism of the dam is based on on the assumption that it will not last for a franction of the anticipated time, that its effects will be minimally beneficial and possibly an environmental disaster and that it may turn out to be a catastrophe waiting to happen.

Dams break, and it is now known that at least two have broken with disastrous results because of either substandard construction or poor design. For example, The Banqiao, an earthen dam on a tributary of the Lower Yangtse in Henan province was long regarded as an iron dam-one that can never fail. But a rainstorm associated with a typhoon in August 1975 forced the reservoir behind the dam to rise nearly seven feet overnight and the heavy siltation at the base of the structure prevented the water from flowing away even when the sluice gates were wide open. The water finally overtopped the dam and the vast structure burst resulting in a lake that stretched for thirty miles downstream and whole villages were inundated in seconds. Various human rights groups have suggested that almost a quarter of a million people died. The Chinese said nothing about the catastrophe and news finally seeped out of the country only in 1994, nearly 20 years after the event…something not possible if the Yangtse dam were to go.

Off The Boat…Where?

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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Back on the boat from the little gorges tour, a woman appears at our cabin door…in her little English she says “I have a hotel for you…a bus will pick you up and take you to the hotel…Yichang is small…it might be hard to find a hotel room at 11pm.” Later, Jana reads in Lonely Planet that the city has nearly 4 million people! We think she may have meant that the city isn’t as developed for tourists as other cities are…or she is just touting. We would get to Yichang, our ticket destination, by 11:00pm she said.

At 8:30pm we received a knock at the door…”quickly, quickly”…as we frantically packed our things, not expecting to be off the boat until 11pm…and then stood at the exit with our backpacks on for 20 minutes. Finally out the doors and up the ramp, we were led to a waiting bus where about 15 Chinese were frantically elbowing each other to get on. I have never seen anything like it in my life. The company apparently overbooked the bus-we think probably with the last minute addition of the three foreigners! To make room for everyone two poor Chinese guys were forced off the bus by the driver and tour operator after much sustained yelling and waving of arms…controlled rage, Jana called it.

We did not know for sure where the boat had let us off until we passed the lights that covered the construction site of the dam and the locks. It would be another couple hours to Yichang where the bus let us off at our hotel…no third bed as promised…this time the foreigners were fooled.

Down The Yangtze

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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Side Trips on The Way
At 6:05am a tour guide knocked at the door…follow me, follow me now, he says! We saw the ghosts…a series of temples in the dark of morning called the Abode of Ghosts or Fengdu Ghost City…also called the Nether World which is said to be the place of devils…Disneyland, Bob says…a series of temples combined with a hokey carnival-type ride.

After looking at the lunch food provided in the small cafe on the boat we munched on our bag of snacks…oranges, dried apricots, boiled eggs, crackers, dried plumbs and tamarind…chocolate kisses…

The lady came back in to try to get us to pay for the whole compartment…they think we don’t understand the way things work and they are right, Jana says. We gestured to the lady that a compartment mate was welcome but he/she couldnít smoke. But money…no more, no more…I said as I sliced my hand sideways through the air…ok, ok, ok she muttered as she left. The funny part is that a fourth person was never put into our compartment…my guess is that no Chinese would have wanted to be in there with us. But still trying to fool a foreigner.

Another knock at the door in the afternoon…follow me, follow me now, the tour guide said again as the boat pulled into the dock. So up the ubiquitous Chinese wooden steps Bob and Jana went to the 12 storey wooden temple called the Stone Treasure Stockade built next to a huge rock bluff which is supposed to look something like a stone seal. It was built in the 17th century during the Qing dynasty. It will become an island when the water level reaches its full height.

For the rest of the day we played house, tried to stay warm in our comforters and with our hot water bottles in the heaterless cabin, and watched the mountainous left side of the Yangtse go by through the big windows of our compartment…banks full of vacation apartments for the Communist Party cadres we think…factories…huge Mandarin characters telling the locals not to cut the newly planted second growth of trees. Jana sang Old Lang Syne along with Kenny G…Bob read and I worked on this story. We never saw any wildlife…no birds…the Chinese ate them all Bob says. Look at those big white buildings up there on the hill I asked idly…they look like prisons…they sell insurance up there Bob says…they sell insurance? Itís probably a good thing this trip is almost over…

Massive Relocation
About 6pm we passed a ghost city…one of many…huge empty factory buildings hanging on the mountainside in the fog like a fantasy city drawn in a childrenís book…no people or roads or cars in view. Whole cities are being vacated and taken apart…to be reassembled higher up the mountain out of reach of the water or moved elsewhere…people cutting and collecting bricks from the rubble and carrying them away on their backs.

You Can Always Fool a Foreigner

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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Down the Yangze River
From it’s origins in Tibet through Tiger Leaping Gorge to Chonqing every Chinese calls China’s longest river Chang Jiang and at 6300km is the third longest in the world. From Chongqing to the North China Sea just north of Shanghai, this river is known as the Yangze by Westerners. Along the way lie the three gorges, regarded by many as one of the great scenic attractions of China…at least for now.

By 2009 when the mega Three Gorges Dam is completed, the gorges will become part of history…nearly 2 million people will have been dislocated…the water will back up for 550km and flood an area the size of Singapore. The dam is five times as wide as the huge Hoover dam. The wall swallows up 26 million tons of concrete and 250,000 tons of steel. It will yield the equivalent of 18 nuclear power plants…four times more than an power station in Europe and eight times the capacity of the Nile’s Aswan Dam and half as much again as the world’s current largest river dam, the Itaipu Dam in Paraguay. and it is said that it will prevent flooding and relieve the region’s environmentally damaging dependency on fossil fuels. It will cost as much as $36 billion generating electricity that will have cost $2000 for every kilowatt of capacity.

The dam will be an epic show, Lonely Planet says, of the new 21st century Communist might and definitive proof of man’s dominance of nature. Li Peng needed a project of this magnitude, and stature says Simon Winchester in his “The River At The Centre of The World,” to revive his image and the morale of the Party, still shaken by the aftermath of Tiananmen Square tragedy.

Chinese Saying: You Can Always Fool a Foreigner
Foregoing the expensive luxury boats for foreigners, we managed to negotiate a ticket for a local Chinese boat down the Yangtze…paying two guys a dollar each to carry our luggage and lead us down the dock to the right boat which we never would have found by ourselves…although we later had our doubts about whether we were on the right boat anyway…doubts nurtured by other travellers’ stories about scams designed by smaller boats to cash in on the more expensive tickets.

Our tickets were for a four passenger compartment…so small all four people had difficulty all standing up at the same time…our fourth compartment mate being an older well-dressed Chinese man.

Waiting on the boat for an 8pm departure, we were immediately offered the entire compartment to ourselves for an additional 200 yuan (about $25) which we declined. When the older gentleman lit up a cigarette in violation of compartment rules we had our suspicion that he was a pawn in an effort…assuming we wouldn’t want a smoking partner…to extort extra money from us. But they can always fool a foreigner.

Then they came around again and wanted an extra $40 each for three side trips…only one we knew for sure we wanted…the trip down the three little gorges which is said to make it all worthwhile. The first trip was at 6:00am the next morning so we crawled into our bunks early. Waiting for sleep amid the constant noise and activity on the boat I thought about “The Gorge,” the music amphitheater in central Washington that sits absolutely on the edge of the Columbia Gorge. I really didn’t think anything I would see here could beat that. But you can always try to fool a foreigner.

A Chinese Adventure With Three Foreign Devils
Then at 2:30am…we hear banging on the door which swings open and the lights go on…a lady engages in lively conversation with our Chinese roommate of which we understand not a word. The Chinese man pulls out his ticket…it wasn’t clear who wasn’t where they were supposed to be.

The three of us responded typically the way we usually have on the whole China trip: Jana groans, oh it can’t be 6am yet as she pulls out her ticket and tries to figure it all out. I’m not moving, I said. Bob lay motionless with eyes closed…waiting for it all to sort itself out.

The lady leaves. Amid our confusion…and explanations to us in Chinese…our roommate suddenly says “bye bye” and flicks the light out as he leaves…but we had just gotten back to sleep when he came back and pointing to his nose delivered more explanations in Chinese. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with his nose. Then he pointed to his watch…oh, I thought…he points to his nose to indicate himself! Then he points to the door. He was to go at 7am. But you can always try to fool a foreigner.

On top of all this, during the night my heavy rubber slippers provided by the boat had fallen off the end of my upper bunk and hit the Chinese gentleman below me on the head…so before he left in the morning our Chinese friend pointed to my slippers and then to his head…sorry, sorry, sorry I begged him…later-peels of giddy laughter. Next time he sees Westerners on a tour he’ll probably get as far away from them as possible! Couldn’t fool a foreigner on this night.

Email From Paul In Ruilli

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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Before we left Chongquing Jana and I got an email from Paul, one of the Ruili kids. Jana and I were both very touched that these kids considered spending time with us so special that one of them even forgot about his own birthday! How many 17 year olds at home would spend an evening with two older women? When we were leaving Ruili, Paul had said to Jana that Chinese people feel sad at parting. When Jana said that we do too, but in so short a time we have become friends, Paul responded by saying, No, it does not take a long time. The email is best read in Paul’s own words:

Eunice, Jana:

howtimefly
I feel very happy, because
i can receive your email! i have told my parents message about you! They feel very move! i know, you are old, however, you are healthy, but you don’t afraid difficulty, from the U S A to China! Do this need nerve!
My mother is 43, i know women’s age is a secret, but she does not mind! she want to travel, my father agree her, but she said to me: i’m afraid.’
This is a chinese’s word about travel.
Why the USA is a developed country, but China is a developing country! problem in there, thinking!
Now is 23:27, my mother asks me to do homework, i
must go now!
Finally, i hope i can see you again, i represent duan na, fantasy, stv thank you again, thank you give us so wonderful time!

yours: paul
good luck to you!

Chongqing China

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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This is San Francisco…so hilly there are no bicycles, colored lights…lively with people walking through the pedestrian malls that fan out from Liberation Monument at the center…originally built to commemorate Sun Yat Sen’s death but rebuilt in 1945 to celebrate the end of China’s war with Japan. During the tenuous Kuomintang-Communist alliance against the Japanese during WWII, Red Cliff Village, outside the city, was used as the offices and living quarters of the Communist representatives, including Zhou Enlai, to the Chiang Kaishek’s Kuomintang. Repeated efforts to bring the two sides together in a unified front against the Japanese failed due to mutual distrust and Chiang Kaishek’s obsession with wiping out the Communists, even at the cost of yielding Chinese territory to the invading army…Japan.

Chongqing is big and sophisticated…but even better…there is no honking here. This is where we will pick up a Chinese junk (boat) to go down the Yanggtse River through the three Gorges. We reveled in our nice three star hotel complete with heat, hot water and all the amenities including HBO. The hotel had a great Sichuan/Cantonese restaurant…a treat after all the noodles in chili-hot strong broth. Now if only the rained-on sidewalks weren’t so slippery because of all the hacking and spitting.

Panda Research Base

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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An early morning one-hour ride on Sam’s Guesthouse bus took us south of Chengdu to the Panda Research Base where China is trying to keep the Giant Pandas from disappearing into extinction. It was fun, even though the air was freezing, to watch the adolescents play…tumbling…climbing…scrapping with each other. It was interesting to watch these toy-like herbivores sit up on their haunches selecting and eating the leaves given them by the park attendents. But the newborns in the nursery window absolutely stole your heart away…delighted chattering Japanese children watching the babies adding to the magic.

You can see the pandas two thirds of the way through one of my China’s videos here.

New Years in Chengdu

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The sleeper train from Kunming to Chengdu takes about 18 hours and passes through more than 200 tunnels. It took 10 years to build the railroad…mostly by political prisoners…and looking through the train windows many of their graves can be seen high on the hillsides.

New Year’s Eve
This is not cold compared to Omaha Nebraska in the winter…but it’s damn cold! We were in a triple in Sam’s Guesthouse…and it was damn cold!

After a good Western dinner at “Granmas,” giving homage to the Western New Year, (Chinese New Year, or Spring Festival, is on January 28 this year) Jana and I curled up in bed in our comforters and hot water bottles…no we weren’t in our hot water bottles but we would have been if we could have been…

Bob went out in search of the New Year in China and found himself the only reveler 20 minutes before midnight at a “party” in an empty room at the Holiday Inn complete with appetizers and favors. He didn�t stay long, lamenting “It’s hard to party by yourself.” But the evening quickly picked up as he walked into Mao Square to find several thousand Chinese counting down the New Year (in English) while watching the Square clock hanging on the side of a building just to the right of Mao’s head…then giving a short cheer and dispersing unsentimentally 30 seconds afterward…which, hating to say goodbye, is what the Chinese do after any social occasion. Bob was back home…yes, hotels have become home…twenty minutes after midnight.

Perspective On China

Posted on by Laughingnomad

China is big.

The population is staggering with a billion and a half people. It’s a matter of getting perspective. Our home state of Oregon only has about 1.5 million people. By comparison Hong Kong has 7 million. Westerners hear mainly about the Chinese cities of Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai, but Guangzhou, the first mainland city we visited two hours north of Hong Kong is a westernized city of commerce with nearly 7 million people…it’s province of Guangdong having 46 million. Kunming, which reminds us of Denver Colorado…a mile high, cold but sunny…has nearly 4 million people but its located in rural province of Yunnan that has nearly 44 million people.

Guilin has nearly 1.4 million people…it�s province of Guangxi having nearly 75 million. Yangshuo, an hour south of Guilin, felt like a small village in comparison with the bigger cities but the guidebook shows it with a population of 300,000…bigger than our home town of Salem, Oregon.

Chengdu has over 11 million people but it’s province, Sichuan, has 109 million. Chongqing, the city where we started our Chang Jiang (Yangze) River trip, is a sophisticated lively city that reminds us of San Francisco with 5.8 million people…it�s province having 32.5 million. You get the idea–lots of Chinese folks—and lots more on the way even with their one child policy. Ultimately a formidable group.

How is China Doing?
As near as we can tell, China’s cities and it�s citizens are doing well. The significant story is in the poorer rural areas where only 10% of China’s land mass is capable of agriculture…encouraging genetic engineering of food to force an increase in production and where unemployment and disastisfaction is high…and where China’s leadership will continue to be challenged by demonstrations that are never reported in the Chinese or Western press.

The arguments against the Yangze River dam pale in comparison to the country’s need for electricity…and in comparison to the economic power China will become because of it. Mao Tse Tung decreed nine categories of enemy: landlords, rich peasants, counterrevolutionaries, bad elements, rightists, traitors, foreign agents, capitalist-roaders and…The Stinking Ninth…intellectuals. The motto then was “Serve The People.” “To Be Rich Is Glorious” is the motto used now by a new practical generation…the first to grow up with no spirituality, no Confucius and no interest in politics…unhampered by religion and it’s dogmas-Taoism, Buddhism and even Christianity-unhampered by emperors, by chairmen, by gods.

China’s youth wants democracy and freedom. But the Chinese “never know when to stop,” says Paul Theroux who recounted his trip through China by train in the 80’s in his “Riding The Iron Rooster.” Where will the brakes come from when China is headed toward excess…in a China already plagued by corruption?

When I asked one of the teenagers in Ruili if he could go to Hong Kong if he wanted to answered “No Money…No Happy!” Another, Paul, a teenager who plays the guitar in his rock band, when asked what he thought about Hong Kong, answered: “Paradise!” You Western capitalist running dogs…look out for the younger generation in Communist China…the generation that is so excited that they are finally free to work hard…free to put money in their pocket…already making materialism in the West look ascetic.

I would love to have a conversation with Ma Jian, the poet, painter and writer who, being harassed by communist cadres, left Beijing in the early 80’s and traveled through China for three years. In his book “Red Dust” Ma foreshadowed the thinking of the next generation when he recounted his thoughts after getting lost and nearly dying in a desert: Walking through the wilds freed me from “worries and fears, but this is not real freedom. You need money to be free.”

When, after a student demonstration in the 80’s in Guangzhou, Paul Theroux asked Andrew, a university student, if he expected to become a capitalist-roader, Andrew answered “I think we have a lot to learn. We want to use the good features of capitalism but not the bad ones.” “Is that possible? Paul asked. “We can try” Andrew answered. Maybe it is only fair that now China gets it’s turn to try…

Ruili China

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Coming down out of the mountains we were happy to see Ruili lying in the green lush valley below…a larger city than I thought…a Chinese/Burma border town with a mix of Han Chinese, minorities and Burmese traders hawking jade and various smoking substances. The streets were not all marked in Pinyin…the communist-designed phonetic romanization of the spelling of Chinese characters…and we spent half the afternoon looking for a hotel listed in the Lonely Planet guidebook before we finally registered at a hotel owned by the Chinese water and electric company, Li Shui, meaning Sweet Water.

That night we found a Burmese street restaurant and ordered five dishes and an alcoholic cherry drink all for a little over two dollars. Back at the hotel, we fell into bed exhausted…but were furiously wakened at various intervals during the night…by prostitutes hoping to find male foreigners!

December 26
The next day after eating breakfast noodles in the market we walked down an ancient cobblestone road to the old part of Riuli called Mengmao where a lovely old man fell into step with us along the way. He took us first to see the elaborate carving of the concrete grave monuments. Huge modular slabs of decorated concrete were being fitted together at one factory after another along the road for single and double graves. Then we walked up the hill to his own grave site where he waved us good-bye.

That night on the way from the Gem Market, five middle school students (about 17 years old) started talking to us as we walked along…hello…where are you from…what is your name…our English names are Zhong (John), Paul, Fantasy, Do Na and Steven…can we help you…listen to us…we have a good idea…all of us ending up eating delicious Burmese fried dumplings and egg cake and exchanging email addresses at a Burmese restaurant. About 10:00pm we were all on our way home when Zhong remembered it was his birthday…

listen to us…we have a good idea…catching up to us and bringing us all back to his parent’s home for cake with light delicious frosting. Then we all struck out for home again…the kids reassuring us that when their parents found out that they had been practicing their English with a couple of foreigners that the parents wouldn’t be angry about the late hour.

“Listen to us…we have a good idea!” So early the next morning the kids picked us up at the hotel and took us in the fog to their school to show us around but the headmaster was already visiting with some Japanese visitors so the guard wouldn’t let us enter. The school was out that day so the students could practice their dances in preparation for the “city party” which would celebrate the tenth year that Ruili had been designated as a “city.”

We asked the kids why the schools always had the names written on them in English…the country had joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) they said and wanted foreigners to come visit the schools.

Then again…listen to us…we have a good idea…as we went to a brand new internet room that was offering free internet on this it’s first day in operation…on the way buying us french fries with chili and a little plastic sack full of Asian Pear relish. We ate Over The Bridge Noodles for lunch…the waitress bringing to the table a tray of thin sliced meats and vegetables and noodles to be “cooked” in a very hot bowl of broth. That afternoon we all took a taxi to the Ruili City Park near the Ruili River (or the Irrawaddy River to the Burmese) where you could see Burma across the river.

While watching hundreds of students acting out various Chinese stories in the dances and music, Jana and I think we must have talked to every young person in Ruili who wanted to practice their English…do you like music…what is your favorite rock band…our favorite band is HOT (High-five Teenagers) from Korea…do you know what high-five means…then I showed them high-five which they liked..then I asked do you know the “brother” handshake like most young people give each other in America but this was met with blank faces and was going nowhere…we like American country-western music they said…we like John Denver and in our last English class we learned about The Carpenters…do you like pets…dogs or cats…do you like sports…we like sand volleyball…and tennis…and PingPong…Paul saying the Chinese weren’t as good at PingPong as they used to be…I like swimming…Jana said she liked running…Fantasy saying oh, that’s too hard…

listen to us…we have a good idea…

But we fled back to our hotel in a tuk-tuk before the afternoon was over…our throats hoarse from talking…and drank a Budweiser with a Chinese label in the warm sun in the backyard patio of the hotel.

The next morning, relieved not to be traveling by bus, we caught a plane to meet Bob in Kunming where we would proceed on to Chengdu Sichuan Province the next day by train. The only event of note on the train was my losing my sixth pair of reading glasses while bending over the squat toilet…hearing the clink and catching a glimpse of tortoise shell as they clinked down the metal pipe to the tracks below.