Water splashing festival and shopping maniacs

Today we (being Agnes and me) saw a water splashing festival which is normally held by the Dai minority in Yunnan, in Southern China. The festival is described as follows:

"The climax of the water-splashing activity is when the people of the different ethnic groups attending the festival splash water upon each other, using basins and buckets. Although all the people are soaked to the skin, all participants are happy."

Well, sounds like fun! Of course Yunnan is not Beijing, but in the Chinese Ethic Culture Park where they try to give you a feeling about traditions of Chinese minorities they had a performance of water splashing. Given the fact that it was a damn hot day it was hard to resist to participate.

The second part of the park also included Uygur, Kazak and Uzbek minorities which live in the Chinese North-West. Worth to remember: China has 56 minorities all over the country. If you're further interested in them / their traditions you can also check the following link: http://www.travelchinaguide.com/intro/nationality/56list.htm

Afterwards we went shopping. Never believe people who say: "I don't like shopping." Would people who don't like shopping buy around 12 pieces of clothes in a Decathlon shop (outdoor / sports brand)? But I can't complain because I myself also got some practical clothes at a good price...

Beijing bicyle and Behai park

Beijing is a relatively bicyle-friendly city. There usually is a seperate road for bikes where you can drive quite independently from the cars. However, at the crossroads you have to pay high attention and it's beneficial if you are used to Beijing traffic rules already, e.g. you should know that a green traffic light doesn't necessarily mean that you can go on. But as this was my third bike trip, I felt quite confident already...

On my way to town I drove past Italy, Germany, Russia and more countries, well, at least the embassies of these countries which are to be found in Beijing's embassy quarter called Sanlitun.

On the way to the city centre I also peeped at the small lanes with 'siheyuans' (typical Beijing style houses) where the daily life of the people who live there is going on. After having passed the drum and bell tower and cyled along the banks of Houhai (the upper lake), I reached my goal of today: Beihai park (the nortern lake park). I was quite surprised that including my detours the whole trip had lasted only one hour and this with a bike that has no gear shift (German: keine Gangschaltung).

Beihai park is a former imperial garden in the center of Beijing next to the Forbidden City. I love visiting Beijing parks on the weekend! People dance, sing, just walk around, birds sing and old men take their birds in cages out for a walk (see the photo)... Beihai additionally offers some sights like a white pagoda, the nine dragon wall and temples. I also learned that it's only 103 days until the Beijing Olympics start (well, you can't miss that, they have countdown boards everywhere in town). After my visit to the park I just felt so relaxed!

on the fastest train in the world and more - Shanghai adventures

My Shanghai adventures were:
- driving with the Maglev, the first magnetic levitation train (German: Magnetschwebebahn) in the world from the city of Shanghai to Pudong airpirt. Wow, not bad, we reached 430 km/h. In the curves this felt quite strange, but an interesting experience.

- visiting Yuyuan garden, a small garden hidden between busy tourist streets on the one side of the garden and old typical small alleys with foodstalls on the street on the other side of the garden.

- cruising on the Huangpu river from where you can see the Bund ('waitan') which basically consists of old colonial style buildings mostly in British style. The British founded the city of Shanghai as a trade port (of mainly opium, silk and tea) in 1842 - beforehand just some local fishermen had lived there. On the other bank of the river you can see the district of Pudong -the business and financial district of Shanghai. However, its skyline and skyscrapers cannot be compared to the impressive skyline of Hongkong which beats Shanghai by far when it comes to that.

My impression of Shanghai in a nutshell: a relatively modern business town worth visiting, but don't expect the big surprise. Still I cannot agree the statement of many people that Shanghai is not a Chinese city at all from the look & feel. Despite the fact that every tenth person you meet on the street / in the subway is a stranger, it still feels like China, because of the people, the buildings etc.

Hangzhou, my new grandma friends, tea plants and more

"The shimmering ripples delight the eye on sunny days,

The dim hills present a rare view in rainy haze.
West Lake compares to Xi Zi the beauty at her best:

She is gorgeous, richly clothed or plainly dressed."

(the author compared the lake to legendary Chinese ancient legendary beauty named Xi Zi)

This is what an author wrote about the West Lake in Hangzhou, which is by far the most wellknown sight of the city. The lake is surrounded by nice parks, temples, pagodas and bridges and inspired many authors and painters ever since.

I didn't go there on my own, but joined a Chinese one-day travel group from Shanghai. This was a totally new experience because the explanations were in Chinese only and the other participants were all Chinese. On the trip I made friends with some old Chinese ladies and on all our cameras together there probably are more than 100 photos of our group now. They were very attentive and made sure I didn't get lost (well, not that there was much of a chance anyway...). The second highlight after our boat trip on the West Lake were the fields with plenty of green tea plants. The Hangzhou area is known for it's extensive tea production.

Wuzhen, one of the Chinese 'little Venices'

Because I had to go on a business trip to Shanghai, I extended the trip in order to do some sightseeing in Shanghai, Wuzhen and Hangzhou.

My first destination was Wuzhen. Wuzhen is a very Chinese watertown, one of the six little watertowns in this region which are also referred to as 'little Venice'. A colleague-friend of mine had recommended me to go to Wuzhen instead of another more famous watertown because she said that "it is not that crowded". Well, I don't want to know how much more crowded the other watertowns must be! Tons of Chinese tourists were strolling through the town, but I still had the impression that the town is not a tourist scene only because many old people were living in the antique wooden houses by the water.

Well, water was another issue. It was raining cats and dogs on that day. Some new acquaintances I made in Wuzhen, two Chinese students, convinced me, however, that a watertown wouldn't be perfect without water coming from above as well and, as they put it, "the rain creates a very special atmosphere." Yepp, I couldn't express it better myself :-).

K.O. after karaoke

Yesterday after work a nice colleague had invited four other colleagues (including me) of our office to do karaoke (karaoke is a Japanese word literally meaning 'empty orchestra'). When we reached the so-called 'KTV' place at 6 pm I was astonished how crowded this place was on a normal week day. Karaoke really is a favorite spare time activity of many Chinese. We had a private room for the five of us and a big dinner buffet for all the KTV rooms.

Then we sang ... and sang ... and sang. I was astonished how good the others could sing! We had a lot of fun singing the latest Chinese love songs and rap songs. If you want to know what Chinese contemporary music sounds like you can try to search for 'zhong guo hua' in the internet and listen to the music video. Beforehand I had prepared some Chinese songs and although I had forgotten some parts I managed quite well. Well, I also was quite surprised about some Chinese songs which were cover versions of European / American songs, e.g. 'Dragosta sin te': "madahu, madahaha" was the same, the rest of the song seems to have been a loose translation.

Summer in Beijing, literary garden and traditional kites

24 degree celsius, sun, blue sky! Sitting next to a fountain, watching children play with the water and drinking a Frappuccino felt just like I could be anywhere Mediterranean, but not in China.

This weekend feels most relaxed, probably also due to the weather.

Yesterday Agnes and me went strolling through a Chinese landscape garden - 'Daguanyuan' at the other end of Beijing. We wondered why the entrance was relatively high (40 Yuan, approx. 3,80 EUR), but as we had left our guide books at home we just enjoyed the garden with its stone formations, its lake, the beautiful blossoming flowers. At home I then read that the garden was was built as a replica of one of the most famous Chinese books, the 18th century 'Dream of the Red Mansions' by Cao Xueqin. Well, shall try to buy and read the book now that I know how important it is in Chinese literary history. At night, after having had dinner in a Vegetarian hutong restaurant with own house altar (Bodhi-Sake) we decided to walk a bit and walked till Tianmen. Tianmen square by night is also worth visiting.

Today I visited Sunhe kite market, quite out of town. Spring is kite season (kite = German: Flugdrachen) in China: just look up into the sky and you'll see extraordinary kites flyiing in many places; not just children fly them, but mainly old men. Kites are something very Chinese: the first kite was invented in China approximately 2300 years ago. They were first used for military purposes to deliver messages or check the direction of the wind. Later on making kites became a Chinese handicraft and flying kites a popular spare time activity. Sunhe market sold anything from vegetables, meat, Xian terracotta soldiers duplicates, clothes to kites. The kites themselves were available in many forms: dragon, butterfly, batman, Mickey Mouse, Beijing opera themes etc. Although I had planned to buy nothing, I could not resist and bargained some decorative kites.

A night with monks and a sacred mountain

After the visit to the Dafo at Leshan we drove by bus to Emei shan (Mount Emei) village where we planned to stay over night. Because it was too late to drive to far inside the mountains, we chose Baoguo Si (Baoguo monastery) as our accomodation.

In the morning the bell woke us at 4:35 am. Well, being a buddhist monk or nun must be hard! They get up that early every day! We wanted to see the sunrise over the mountain, but the aurora unfortunately appeared opposite the mountain and we couldn't see the sun rise at all. Too misty! But nevertheless it was worth getting up that early, enjoying the fresh air, hearing roosters and birds greeting the early morning and the monks processing for their morning prayer (reciting the "amitabha sutra" - "Ēmítuó jīng" and walking around in a spiritual procession. The sutra describes what one must do to be reborn in the so-called Western Pure Land).

Two hours on a narrow mountain road brought us to the place where we wanted to start our hike on Mount Emei. Well, Mount Emei is.... yes, again, ... UNESCO world heritage and one of the four sacred Buddhist mountains in China.

The hike itself was nice, but not what you'd usually expect from hiking. I'd rather call our activity "ultimate stair climbing" because the way up the hill was fully covered with concrete. Still we had fun watching wild apes sitting around in the trees and making friends with our Chinese fellow hikers. A group of Chinese engineering students asked us shyly whether we really were Russian - they had heard this rumour going around the other Chinese hikers :-). We also got to know two nice Chinese students of German language and decided to walk together for some time. We met again some of the Chinese we had seen at Leshan the day before and our photo is definitely on more than ten Chinese cameras now.

Up on the mountain peak a surprise awaited us. No rain or bad view as other travellers had warned us we would most probably encounter. Beaming sunlight and a wonderful landscape! A golden statue of elephants with a buddha on it - we had reached the golden peak! I have no words to describe the unique landscape with the buddha clouds (as a certain form of clouds is called there). 美妙! Just have a look at the photos to have an impression yourself!

The Sunday we spent back in Chengdu. Chengdu has a big Mao statue in the city centre and a lively tea house atmosphere. Mao was once highly esteemed by the Chinese, but with e.g. the cultural revolution where a lot of Chinese cultural heritage was destroyed and other less brilliant ideas he step by step destroyeed this admiration.If you want to know more about chairman Mao I can recommend the German webpage: http://www.planet-wissen.de/pw/Artikel,,,,,,,077B5724A05F132FE0440003BA5E08D7,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,.html

We visited much more before our plane took us back to Beijing (e.g. Manjushri monastery, a very active religious place with a lake full of turtles and a nice vegetarian restaurant), but I shall finish here with my blog entry of this 4-day-trip....

Tal, taller... the tallest. Visiting Leshan Buddha

Friday morning we left Chengdu early for Leshan. Leshan is a relaxes middle sized town with one main attraction that draws the attention of millions of (mainly Chinese) visitors... and us. Again UNESCO world heritage, again a record: The "Dafo" of Leshan is the tallest stone buddha statue in the world.

The story of its construction is an interesting one:

"Construction was started in 713 AD, led by a Chinese monk who hoped that the Buddha would calm the turbulent waters that plagued the surrounding town with frequent inundations / floods. When funding for the project was threatened, he is said to have gouged out his own eyes to show his piety and sincerity. Construction was completed by his disciples ninety years later. Apparently the massive construction resulted in so much stone being removed from the cliff face and deposited into the river below that the currents were indeed altered by the statue, stopping the frequent inundations."

Leshan Dafo is 71 m high with 7 m long ears and 1.6 m long toe nails. Really impressive! Because of its location on the bank of the river, we chose to go on a boat trip to see the full buddha from the water first. Then we decided to approach the buddha, drove there by rickshaw (the most common transport option in Leshan) and climbed down from his head to his feet to enjoy the different perspectives. Well, we were not the only ones doing that given the fact it was a national Chinese holiday.... Masses of Chinese climbed down and up with us making the whole experience a crowded one.

Ohhh! Ahhh! Cute panda bears (Sichuan adventure part 1)

Last Friday was a public holiday (tomb sweeping day, something similar to the German "Allerheiligen") so Claudia and me hit the road again. This time to Chengdu in Sichuan which is famous for spicy food as well as for the national animal of the Chinese - the Giant Panda.

The journey was self organised again which is possible due to our in the meantime luckily good basic Chinese. On the first day we visited the Panda Breeding Station in Chengdu. Pandas (giant panda 大熊猫 da xiong mao - literally translated "big bear cat" are really cute animals and they are vegetarians.

"Giant Pandas are easily recognized by its large, distinctive black patches around the eyes, over the ears, and across its round body. The panda has a diet which is 99% bamboo. Giant Pandas live in a few mountain ranges in central China, in Sichuan, Shanxi. They are an endangered species."

Many "ohhh"s and "ahhh"s later we had seen many pandas - not only giant pandas, but also red pandas (which look a little bit like badgers - "Dachs"). And the luck was with us again - just as we had finished looking at the cute little panda youngsters we noticed that food was being delivered to them and staid. During the day, pandas often just relax, but when it's food time they are very active. The youngsters even got milk to drink. They stood up on their feet to reach the milk bottles and as soon as they had them they fell backwards on the grass again where they drank it in a relaxed lying position. What a fun to watch the panda youngsters drop in a row! They pandas also tried to steal foot from each other - one semi-adult panda used his hands to hold them in front of another panda's eyes so he couldn't see anymore and at the same time stole his piece of bamboo.

At night we visited a Sichuan Opera show. This is famous for face changing:

"Performers wear brightly colored costumes and move to quick, dramatic music. Their faces are vividly colored, for they are wearing masks. However, within a fraction of a second, their masks' change — revealing completely new and vibrant visages." We didnt't manage to reveal the secret of how they change the masks but along with acrobatics, shadow images show,Chinese music and much more we really enjoyed the show.
I'm going to tell you tomorrow about our adventure during the other three days...