Wednesday, April 22

We departed Tibet today, flying to Chongqing to board our ship for the cruise down the Yangtze.

Chongqing is one China’s independent cities, meaning that it is not part of any province. By some measures, it is the largest city in the world, with 33 million people, about the same population as Canada in an area about the size of Austria. (Some sources list Shanghai as larger, but it depends on how you count. Shanghai is bigger than the central city of Chongqing, but if you include everyone within the legal boundaries of Chongqing, it is larger.) Continue reading

Monday, April 20

One of the things that is different about Tibet is the distances. Lhasa has a population of 400,000, small by Chinese standards. This morning we drove from our hotel to the main town square. It took 15 minutes, not the hour it would have taken in Beijing. Continue reading

Sunday, April 19

This morning we were up at 4:30 to catch an early flight to Lhasa, the capital of Tibet. Matthew wanted to get us there early so we would have time to adapt to the thin air of Lhasa, which is at 12,000 feet. The two-and-a-half-hour flight offered some spectacular views of the mountains.

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Saturday, April 18

Because of our late arrival last night, our day in Xi’an was very full. Xi’an (pronounced she-an) was the imperial capital of China for 12 dynasties, as well as the beginning of the Silk Road. It is loaded with history.

We stopped first at the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, a 7th-century structure that is a holy place for Buddhists. Our view of the outside was dampened somewhat by the rain, but the inside offered numerous murals and statues.

The top attraction of the day, however, was the terra cotta army. These thousands of life-size warriors, along with horses and chariots, were buried with the first emperor of the Qin dynasty in the third century B.C. They were discovered in 1974 by a farmer who was digging a well. The farmer has written a book about his discovery and was there the day we visited, signing copies of the book.

The story goes that when Bill Clinton visited Xi’an, he met the farmer. To prepare for the visit, the farmer learned a bit of English and was primed to ask Clinton “How are you?’ and to respond “Me, too” when Clinton said “Fine.” But when the day came, the farmer was nervous and asked Clinton, “Who are you?” Clinton replied, “I’m Hillary Clinton’s husband.” Said the farmer: “Me, too.” Continue reading

Friday, April 17

This morning, our last in Beijing, we had a tour of one of the city’s hutongs, old neighborhoods of alleyways lined by courtyard houses as well as businesses. Many of the hutongs have been demolished to make way for condos and office buildings, but a few are being preserved as a way to safeguard part of Beijing’s cultural heritage.

Our tour began with a demonstration of hacky sack, a game that is popular in the hutongs because it requires little space. (It’s also played in New York and other cities in the United States.) We were treated to this demonstration by a 59-year-old hacky-sack master:

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Thursday, April 16

Today we went to the Great Wall. It is as impressive up close as it is in the pictures. We went to the Badaling Hills section, which is quite close to Beijing. Continue reading

Wednesday, April 15

Today we went to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. I decided it was better when it was forbidden because now it has lots of tourists.

Tiananmen Square comprises 109 acres, one of the largest public squares in the world, but it was still overrun with people, most of them from rural areas of China. You could spot them because they tended to wear matching hats. There were also a few groups of Western tourists. The square would have been completely full except that a large area between Mao’s tomb and Great Hall of the People, where the Chinese Peoples Congress and the Chinese Communist Party meet, was cordoned off for some kind of ceremony at the parliament building.

You have to line up and pass through a security check to get into the square, but the line moves pretty fast. Continue reading

We are back after almost three weeks in China, tired but happy. It was an amazing trip. Blogging during the trip proved to be problematic because of Chinese restrictions on the Internet and because we were so busy that we had little time left for blogging. Over the next few days, we will try to recount the trip as it happened and post as many photos as we can.

Tuesday, April 14

We reached our hotel at about 4 a.m. Beijing time after about 30 hours of traveling.

Today was supposed to be a day of resting up and getting over jet lag but we were both awake by 8:30 and couldn’t get back to sleep, so we got up. We caught the tail end of breakfast, a buffet that offered everything from scrambled eggs to stir-fried snow peas. From this buffet you could have a Chinese breakfast, an American breakfast, an English breakfast, a Dutch breakfast, or if you wanted to restrain yourself, a French breakfast.

We decided to sign up for an extra tour that was being made available that afternoon for early arrivals. So at noon we climbed aboard a bus with other Americans and Matthew, our Chinese tour guide. Continue reading

Using the Internet in China is proving to be an adventure. No Google, no Facebook, no Twitter, not even the New York Times crossword puzzle. 

It so appears that WordPress is blocked, which makes updating the blog difficult (and means this post may not make it online). 

So the world will have to wait to learn of our adventures in China until we get somewhere with fewer restrictions.