Hot in Shanghai

Shanghai again. I had to go there on a business trip as consultant to our joint ventures there together with an external consultant.

The difference to my last visits? Now it's summer in Shanghai! Which means: around 37 degree celsius and extremely humid air (75% humidity)! Basically spending time outside was not really a pleasure.

That's why I didn't visit much outside, but mainly inside. I saw my first acrobatic show of the Shanghai Acrobatics Troupe. It was quite amazing how flexible human bodies can be and often I just thought: "Ouch! This must hurt!", but the acrobatics still managed to smile. Second indoor visit: The Shanghai Ocean Aquarium with the world's longest underwater tunnel (155 m) -some fish were very nice, others looked scary although they were harmless and again others looked harmful and just were that. Third visit: an area called Xitiandi in the former French concession with a Shikumen museum. Xitiandi in one word: boring. Why? Rebuilt French style houses, international restaurants, foreigners there: more than 50% and the Chinese seem to mainly visit the place where the Communist Party held its first national congress or to have a look at 'laowai's' / foreigners. The Shikumen musuem in one word: xing. Why? Shikumen is a unique architectural style in Shanghai like the Hutongs in Beijing and it's interesting to see how people used to live in Shanghai some time ago.

Di san tian / Third day

Yangshuo itself it no big surprise: The favorite place of western tourists to stay overnight in the Guilin region, it's quite touristy, but nevertheless okay. They say it's famous for pickpockets, but luckily I didn't get in personal contact with them.

Fuli Old Town is half an hours drive out of town, an old farming town with old to 'near-to-destruction' houses with red lucky new years posters and Mao photos on the walls. We also passed the hairdresser's. An old rusty seat with a broken mirror in front, but seems to fit the purpose. Right now those small agricultural village have one challenge: all the young people who can are leaving for the big towns. Mainly old people live there.

The highlight of the day was Moon Mountain. That's the formation you can see in the first photo! with me in front. The view down the mountain was also amazing and was worth the exhausing thirty minutes hike up the hill in 30 degree, sunshine and extremely humid air (the last one being the factor which makes it hard for me).

Last but not least 'Shangrila'. Well, who knows where the real Shangrila is? China has at least two, one near Yangshuo, one in Yunnan. Shangri-La is a fictional place described by British author James Hilton . In his book, "Shangri-La" is a mystical, harmonious valley, the people who live there are almost immortal, living years beyond the normal lifespan. The Shangri-La near Yangshou is a park of minorities where you drive around with a boat through the karst landscape and see minorities dancing and / or singing. Not quite what the book describes Shangrila to be, but nevertheless not bad. So I still have to continue looking for my personal fairyland of Shangrila. But often things you are searching hard are just in front of you...

Cruising on Li River

Every tourist to Guilin does a river cruise on the Li river (shui / water) passing the karst mountains (shan / mountain). In winter the river is totally dry and no boat can go on the river, however, now being rain season, there was sufficient water.

The boats started at 9:30 am. The boats meaning: around one hundred boats at the same time, one driving after the other. That's Chinese mass tourism at its best! And one hundred boats is low season, as I was told they have up to 300 boats. Most of the people on the boats were Chinese and Chinese love taking photos of themselves in front of famous rock formations. Famous rock formations were the rock ressembling 'Guanyin buddha', an apple shaped karst rock, a rock where you had to search twelve horses and last, but not least, the '20 kuai landscape'. So what's that? On the 20 kuai banknote there's a landscape painting of one special spot on Li river which every Chinese tourist wants to have a photo of. So imagine dozens of Chinese standing on board, guessing: 'Is this the 20 kuai?" or shouting out "Now this really is the 20 kuai!". They started shouting 20 minutes before we actually reached the '20 kuai landscape' which of course was officially announced and nobody could have possibly missed it. But what a fun!

When I reached Yangshuo, the destination of the boat trip, I got myself a bike and drove out into the countryside until where the streets end and the water buffalos work together with farmers on the fields and rice paddies... Very nice views again.

At night I visited the famous show 'Impression' , directed by the Chinese director Zhang Yimou. Just imagine a stage on the water between five karst mountains and impressive light effects using mountain and water as part of the stage. Definitely not inexpensive (around 300 kuai if you really want to see something), but this show owns a "wow!", not for the minority girls singing, but for the great fishermen scenes and light effects.

Gulilin ba! 桂林吧!

Right now it's low season for tourism in Guilin because it's raining nearly every day there. My colleagues had warned me to go there and when I checked the weather forecast it didn't sound promising: for the next ten days it forecasted between medium and heavy rain. So the good news first: The first and third day in and around Guilin there was fantastic sunshine, the second day was a little bit cloudy, but brought only an astounding ten minutes rain. When I got back today to Beijing, this was the first real rain I saw the whole weekend!

So where is Guilin? In the South of China - it's part of the autonomous Chinese region of Guizhou where many minorities live.

The first day I visited Reed Flute Cave (Ludi Yan) , a stalactite and stalagmite cave. Very interesting especially the colourful lightning system used and the creative interpretations of stones. I could see bears, a snowman and a christmas tree as well as a lion saying good bye to visitors. Definitely worth a visit because it's fun. The photo I attach shows a stalactite and stalagmite scene called "Shanghai" or "Beijing" or "New York" - whatever version the visitor prefers.

After that the famous Elephant Trunk Hill: a rock formation next to the river resembling an elephant drinking water. I always liked elephants because they are so peaceful animals.

Climbing Fubo Hill, another famous sight of Guilin town, I could enjoy a nice sunset over the town and the surrounding mountains which are karst mountains because of their particular form before I went on a night boat trip on the Guilin lakes. On this boat trip we also passed cormorant fishers (Kormoranfischer). The fishers there seem to be too lazy to fish themselves, but they use the birds for that task. They put a string around the cormorants' throats so that they cannot swallow the fish and then take the fish which the cormorant wanted to eat out of their mouthes again. However, it seems that there are not many real cormorant fishers anymore. When I asked, I was explained: "fishing is not allowed on the lakes here, they just are allowed to show it for tourists". Well...

First day's conclusion: "Guilin shan shui jia tian xia" / "Guilin's scenery beats that of anywhere in the world" as a Chinese saying goes, seems to be true.

Travel guides - truth or fiction?

Travel guides show to be useful many times. After I heard in the news that a LP travel author had admitted he had never ever travelled to the places he wrote about, but just copied from other books and the internet, here you can find now the ultimate test: Are travel guides telling the truth? The travel guides I used where the Lonely Planet China (Vietnam edition) and Beijing Excursion Guide (Immersion Guides, a loan on the scientific behalf from Agnes :-), thanks).

Immersion Guide titles: "Daytrip"

My opinion: Already the page starts with a lie. Marco Polo Bridge (Lugou Qiao, 卢沟桥, MP Bridge) and the adjacent chinese-japanese war memorial plus town of Wanping take you two to three hours to visit. The travel time even from Northern Beijing is only one hour. Conclusion: "Time is relative" as Einstein, the famous Chinese philosopher :-), said.

Immersion Guide says: "The bridge left a big impression on Marco Polo 700 years ago. He praised it in the story of his travels as 'a very fine stone bridge, so fine indeed, that it has very few equals in the world.' " I personally like to the idea of adventurous travellers travelling around the world already back then (so to say or grandgrandgrand... fathers). Nevertheless some scientists question whether or not Marco Polo was in China, and point out several things that a European traveler probably would have mentioned, but that MP did not mention and that there is no mention of Marco Polo in Chinese accounts of the period. They say he just heard stories from other travellers and invented the whole thing about his trips.

Immersion Guide: " The MP bridge, lined with 501 distinctive stone lions offers an orgasmically precious experience for stone lion aficionados." LP Guide: "The bridge is host to 485 carved stone lions - each animal is different." I have to disappiont you because I didn't count them so I do not know how many they are. I would go for a compromise similar to Chinese bargaining: 493 lions, OK with all of you? The more interesting thing about the lions is that they are all different from each others: some lions have babies sitting on the head of the mum lion etc. And, well, aficionados - por supuesto eso lo somos, pero k kiere decir la cosa esa del orgazmo???

LP guide: "Legend has it that the lions move around during the night". Not only at nite, I can assure you, but if you want to see lions moving around you'd maybe better visit South Africa's National Parks or the zoo. Chances are higher...

Immersion Guide: "Of course, if all the stone lion excitement just warms you up for more, there are plenty of vendors to the west of the bridge ready to sell you enough stone lions to sink a suitcase." I quite like the cheeky language of the guide, but I only saw two sellers and the frogs in the swamp below the bridge were croaking (German: quacken) and singing so loud I didn't even notice somebody was trying to sell something to me.

After the Marco Polo bridge which in fact was quite interesting, I also visited the "Anti-Japanese war memorial hall" (Immersion Guide) or the "Memorial Hall of War of Resistance against Japan" (LP) where they had English language audio guides and where I learned something about the war between China and Japan (1931 until 194x). Why did they build this museum in Wanping? Because Marco Polo bridge played an important role in this war. You can look up more facts on the war with the help of search machines if you want. Maybe the information you'll find is true, maybe not. Just as with travel guides...

Out of town again - Erdoguan

Today we could still feel our two hour kungfu lesson from yesterday in our feet, but nevertheless we went out of town again to the Erdoguan section of the Great Wall. Erdoguan is basically the least croweded Great Wall place I've seen so far and the least restored as well. That explains why it is not the most suitable spot to hike on the wall, but a tiny path leads through the wall from one farmer's village to the next, not too exhausting a hike (although the sun was burning down on us) with a view on the unrestored wall. The workforce of hundred thousands of workers built the wall, but the workers were not buried under the wall as is often claimed, because as experts say: "the builders of the Great Wall were no fools, they knew that a buried body under the wall would rot and leave a hole." Well, this shows that there is a lot of myths about the wall there but of course they are often just that:myths and not the truth.

An old man from the village where we started our trail showed us the way and came along. His family has lived out there for many generations and earns a living from agriculture, i.e. of peaches, plums, persimmons and other fruits. I learned from him that the sun spots (German: Sonnenflecken auf der Haut) on my arm resemble star formations in the sky (waggon etc). Well, he definitely was creative :-). Amazingly, the crops are now ripe and the villagers spread the crops on the street to dry or split it (well, if we understood it correctly, the cars can also drive over it to help split the crops, but I do not know whether this is reasonable???), so one way of the road out there you could not drive on, but it was used for agricultural work. They also spread fruits like peaches on the floor to dry it there (see last photo).

My first Kungfu lesson & shopping again

For today morning I had arranged my first kungfu (功夫, Gōngfu) lesson in a park nearby. A colleague from the Netherlands had recommended me the teacher. I had wanted to take a lesson and try myself since my visit to Shaolin monastery, but now that I had a recommendation and that "Kungfu Panda" starts in the movies, it just seemed the right time to have a try. Agnes and her brother Jakob joined the lesson. We tried three different styles of Chinese kungfu art: Shaolin style (many kicks and moves, mainly concentrating on body flexibilty), another style mainly concentrating on self defense and for the 'cool down' we did Tai Qi, which is much more slowly, less demanding and smoother. I personnaly liked Shaolin style the most. By the way, did you know that China tried to establish modern Wushu/ modern Chinese martial art, which is yet another style, as a discipline in the Olympics? This attempt was not supported by the Olympic Committee, so now there is no such discipline.

In the afternoon after a good shower we visited Panjiayuan Antique market - the "mother of all Beijing antique markets". Well, guess what you rarely ever find there? Yeah, right, real antiques. For non-experts like me it's hard to distinguish between old and new, but the stroll around the market was quite nice and we found some unusual stalls selling old phones or suitcases, so it was worth the visit.