Shanghai Express - Part 3

April 27 - 28, 2014

Are we there yet? My body already felt that it had marched through a whole day, but it was only early afternoon. The Shanghai Museum, an all too brief rest at the hotel then a traditional Chinese supper followed by an acrobatic show remained on the agenda for the day.  A Shanghai Express indeed!

Fed and watered (well actually beer - it's safer than water) at a Mongolian BBQ, we got back on the bus. The driver adroitly manoeuvred the leviathan through Shanghai traffic and pulled up at the Shanghai Museum.

This very contemporary architecture houses ancient Chinese art, including bronze, jade, calligraphy, ceramics and more. To be honest a museum, almost any museum is not usually on my list of must see places in far away lands. This comes from growing up and now living near to a city with a world class museum (Royal Ontario Museum - the ROM) housing extensive cultural and natural history exhibits. When away from home I prefer to be outside where life is lived, with landscapes, buildings and people, but the Shanghai Museum was on the tour, so in we went, and I'm glad we did.

Turned loose to explore on our own, my love and I spent most of the time in the jade and bronze exhibits, though the calligraphy was also quite intriguing.

I was astounded to discover that anyone could put their camera lens right up against the glass display cases. Don't even think about trying that at the ROM! A burly security guard will materialize out of nowhere if it even looks like a finger is going to graze the glass. A camera lens pressed tight up against the case? The alarms will ring out, granting the offender a 'toes skimming the ground' escort from the building. Not so at the Shanghai Museum, though flash photography was forbidden in the calligraphy exhibition.

My energy was really flagging by now so I welcomed the short respite back at the hotel. I still had not made the connection between the air pollution and my deteriorating well being. I attributed the growing tightness in my chest to a developing upper respiratory infection and treated it accordingly, but even just walking was becoming an effort. I made it to supper and truly enjoyed the feast of delights rotating on the humongous lazy susan at the table. There is a certain etiquette to these family style repasts. Far from being a 'free for all' it is actually quite orderly: each one at the table helps themselves to the food on the serving platter in front of them; when all have done so, the lazy susan is rotated until the next platter of food lines up in front of the diners. Reaching across serving platters or asking for platters not in front of you is impolite, as is turning the lazy susan while others are still serving themselves from it. One other etiquette note - and this is a tough one for westerners, who were taught to finish everything on the plate - don't clean your plate, leave some food on it. An empty plate signals to the host that you did not get enough to eat and encourages some servers to bring out even more food!

I have no recollection of the Chinese acrobatic show which took place in the theatre of the Shanghai Centre. I know I went, but by that time I was having to concentrate on just breathing. I suppose it didn't help matters that I was getting frustrated and rather annoyed at not being able to enjoy all that was on offer. Let me call a spade a spade here and admit that I was seriously p!ssed off. Then the darkness came - but I wrote about that earlier.

Morning came and with it a revelation about the perils of fine particulate matter on lungs. Now armed with asthma drugs, an N95 mask and sheer determination, I pushed into the day.












First stop the Bund, a waterfront promenade; Renaissance to Gothic to art nouveau buildings on one bank, contemporary skyscrapers on the other. And smog.

mask down for pictures :-)

Then it was bye bye Shanghai,

and hello Wuhan. My heart sank as the plane made it's final approach to the city. I was so sure the air in Shanghai had been an anomaly.

A prickling of fear invaded my spine. I reminded myself that I had appropriate drugs now - though I had no idea what I was taking - and I was wearing the best mask over my nose and mouth. My breathing had marginally improved. Onwards and upwards...

"Nothing can quite prepare you for the sheer size of Wuhan. At over 3000 square miles, this city is simply enormous." So reads the information sheet that Viking River Cruises provided. Is there any city in China that on one scale or another isn't ginormous? I suspect not.

But here is where I have my first encounter with the legendary Yangtze River. It  flows through the heart of Wuhan where it also meets the Han River.

Here we board the Viking Emerald for a four day cruise along this, the longest river in Asia. Greeted by cymbals, drums and dragon, I allow myself to be in the moment.

©2014 April Hoeller

Tianjin on Our Own

April 24, 2014 - at Sea
M/V Celebrity Millennium
10:00am Position: 38deg 15' North     121deg 40' East
Day 1 of 2 Cruising the East China Sea enroute to Shanghai; speed 16kts on a heading of 114deg
A sunny but cool 12C with winds from the South at 15kts.

We took a day to catch our breath after our exhilarating trip out to Lao Long Tou (Old Dragon's Head) along the Great Wall, (see previous post), but on day 3 of the stay in port we took Celebrity's "Tianjin on Your Own" excursion into the third largest city in China (but it might be the fourth largest or even fifth - it all depends on who and what is being counted).  I can say for certain that Tianjin is one of four cities in China (joining Beijing, Shanghai and Chongqing) directly administered by the central government.

Even at 7:30 in the morning, the 90 minute bus ride in from the port revealed a city in a frenzy of demolition, building and roadworks. If you are in the business of cranes, concrete or heavy equipment, then this is the place for you. Closer into the city things were a little more established. The bus dropped us off at the library of the impressive Tianjin Cultural Centre complex. Rows of bicycles, many enhanced with motors and festooned with other bits and bobs that would never pass safety rules here, lined the sidewalk.

As lovely as this building was, (including western toilets!) it was a long way from the central attractions that we were interested in seeing. After a bit of a hike we found the metro station and with the welcome aid of English ticket machines and stations announcements, managed to find and then get off at the right station. Still, it was a further hike to the old part of the city - my FitBit tracker blew through the 20,000 step mark before we were back on board the ship.

First stop was the Dabei Buddhist Monastery (Monastery of Deep Compassion), a grand complex of temples and shrines, some dating from the late Qing dynasty (1669). Much of this Zen structure had to be rebuilt after the ravages of the Cultural Revolution compounded by a massive earthquake in 1976. On this day the monastery was very busy with tourists and worshippers. I loved the little buddha statues stationed throughout this site.

Outside the monastery a vast market square featured stalls offering anything Buddhist or nearly Buddhist - prayer mats, mala beads, birds, charms, statues, God money ("joss"), incense and towers of firecrackers - all within the view of the Tianjin Eye (ferris wheel).

On to Ancient Culture Street, a wholesale reproduction of a traditional Chinese neighbourhood stuffed with vendors selling anything Chinese from calligraphy to chopsticks, redware to papercuts, jade to candy floss and more, from the cheap knockoff to the richly authentic. The challenge is to know the difference, and we don't. The only things we bought were an almond cookie and a sesame snack, but the stroll-through was colourful and well worth the time.

Beyond Ancient Culture Street, the Confucius Temple brought us welcome quiet and solitude with its goldfish ponds, archways and altars. Even though this Ming Dynasty temple sits surrounded by retail and apartment towers, it exudes a luxurious serenity. A great place to just sit in silence.

From the peace of the Confucius Temple we made our way into the old town along a pedestrian market street not unlike Ancient Culture Street. For the record, scooters are equal to pedestrians here. Most interesting were the bronze sculptures along the way. The Drum Tower anchors the end of the street.

Tianjin was originally a walled city but all that remains to mark the old town is the restored Drum Tower. Drum Towers and their sisters, Bell Towers were the timepieces of the ancients. A morning bell and a dusk drum enclosed the work day from the Han Dynasty (206BC) onward. Eventually the bell and the drum were housed in the highest and largest buildings of the city and not side by side but one in front of the other. It's interesting what one finds in the shadow of a Drum Tower...

But now time was catching up to us. We had to be back at the Tianjin Library by 3pm and it was now 2:10 and not a metro station to be seen. The GPS indicated the nearest one could be reached in ten to fifteen minutes but at the other end a twenty minute hike to the library awaited our tired feet. The timing was just a little too tight for us, so we opted to hail a cab which, according to the guide on the bus in the morning, was very easy. It wasn't. Though there were umpteen blue and white taxis, it took a frustrating ten minutes of arm waving to get one to stop for us. And then the driver had no idea where the Tianjin Cultural Centre and Library was. Thank God for GPS on a smartphone! We were able to show the cabbie exactly where we had to be AND we were able to check the route he took all the way there. We pulled up at precisely 2:56pm and with an air of nonchalance took our seats on the bus. We were not the last people to make it back.
Phew!

©2014 April Hoeller