May day in Fenghuang ancient town



Fenghuang at night

 Over the May 1 holiday I went to Fenghuang in western Hunan province, another popular “ancient town” that people flock to as old China disappears. Getting there involved taking the high speed train to Changsha out of the Wuhan train station, which is actually in northern Wuchang and serves only the high speed train network. It’s a huge, ultramodern place, more like airport than train station, with sixteen gates. The high speed rail network is still a-building all over China; when it’s done it’s going to be the best of its kind in the world.

The trip to Changsha was very twenty-first century; after that, things began to retreat rapidly toward the mid-twentieth, and earlier. The bus trip to Fenghuang was out of the Changsha west bus station, a jumble of a place, not helped by pouring rain. There were no gates through which to access the buses: you just go out and stumble about trying find your bus in the muddy yard, while people with little signs try to find you. The four hour bus trip went through rugged, beautifully mountainous countryside, but the road was atrocious, with constant stops for construction and mudslides.

Fenghuang and the Tuo river

Fenghuang – Phoenix town -- has an interesting history. It was set up along the Tuo River during the Ming and Qing dynasties during a campaign to suppress rebellions by the local Miao population. The Xiangxi Border Wall built to protect the town still stands. It was, a local brochure notes, a rather small wall, a sixth the length of the Great Wall, “because that Miao Ethnic Minority group was not that formidable as North minorities.”

The town is in a picturesque setting along the river. Despite the hard journey there, the place was jammed over the brief May Day holiday: the sign over one bar cum service center identified the place as “China’s famous tourist area bays,” and “A beautiful met A roman tic story – All in keep watcher.”

People were doing all the things people do in ancient towns: dressing up in Miao costumes and having their picture taken, dressing up in Kuomintang uniforms and having their picture taken, going for a boat ride on the river in a Wupeng boat and having their picture taken.

KMT kitsch

Eating, of course. My favorite dish was little deep fried small whole crabs, although the tiny whole deep fried crispy shrimps were pretty good too. And the little deep fried fish. And the deep fried dofu.

Deep fried yummies



Miao for a day


Fenghuang was home to the famous writer Shen Congwen, Miao author of Xiao Xiao and other novels dealing mainly with Miao life. The New York Times noted on his death in 1988 that he had been compared to Chekhov, but was denounced “by the Communists and Nationalists alike,” and his books were banned in Taiwan and destroyed in China: “So successful was the effort to erase Mr. Shen's name from the modern literary record that few younger Chinese today recognize his name, much less the breadth of his work.” This was in 1988, but Shen’s former home in Fenghuang is now a tourist site, and his books widely sold, at least in Fenghuang.


Rafting to Miao village



Getting to Miao ren gu

Miao plowman

On the second day I took a bus trip to a Miao village, the name of which I was never able to get clear (it was just called “Miao ren gu,” ancient village, by everyone I asked). Getting there involved long delays, a bus ride, followed by a raft ride, then clambering through a cave to get to the remote location the villagers had chosen to protect themselves from the Han forces. It was another muddy, rainy day, but a picturesque setting, where people wear reed capes in the rain and use water buffalo to plow, something you don’t see much elsewhere in China now.

The return bus trip to Changsha on day 3 was less arduous – better bus, fewer stops – but I arrived at Changsha west bus station in saturating rain, deep mud, long lines of sodden, grimy people in the rain struggling to clamber on to the few buses. Eventually, wet and grumpy, I got to my hotel, conveniently located near the Whacko market.


Hunan Normal school


The next day, a Monday, I visited Hunan First Normal College, Chairman Mao’s former school in Changsha. I had greater ambitions, wanting to see the Changsha museum and the Mawangdui tombs, which I’d visited in 1980, but both are closed on Mondays. Mao was a student at the school from 1913 to 1918, and taught there for a time in the early 1920s. Despite its several exalted designations (“One –thousand-year Academy and One-hundred-year Normal School,” as well as “National Major Cultural Relic Preservation Unit,” and “Patriotic Education Base for Changsha and Hunan Province”), the school is still busy, with noisy music students on the day I was there.

Viewing 樱花 (cherry blossoms) in Wuhan

 The Wuhan University campus was busy this weekend, March 19-20, with visitors coming to see the cherry blossoms.Thirty years ago the cherry trees bloomed, of course, and were admired, but it wasn't the carnival it is now, with trails of honking cars bulling their way through the crowds and lots set aside for tour buses.

Many of the trees were planted during the anti-Japanese war, when the Japanese established headquarters at the University. Two years ago a pair of Chinese visitors caused a controversy by wearing Japanese kimonos to view the blossoms. Remarks like "they were intentionally trying to provoke, completely disregarding the disaster Japan brought to China," and "If you cannot tolerate kimonos, then why can you tolerate Japanese sakura cherry blossoms?" appeared on Chinese blogs.

Hawkers of soda, snack food and bracelets have set up shop along the road running in front of Wuda's old buildings.

The period of blooming is only a few days. According to studies in Japan over many centuries, and at Wuda since 1947, it has come earlier each year: about two days earlier over each decade, reflecting the effects of global warming.


The steps up to the old library and classroom buildings, past the old student residential section, still in use.







Viewing plum blossoms in Hangzhou



Hangzhou Botanical Garden, February 25



I made another quick visit to Hangzhou this last weekend, February 25-28, to look at plum blossoms blooming in the Botanical Park. Plum blossoms, a common motif in traditional painting and poetry, have always been associated with the Chinese New Year.

However, there were no scholars in long robes and scholar hats, brush in hand, painting or composing odes to plum blossoms. Instead, digital cameras took closeups of the red, white, and yellow 'mei hua,' , and picnickers picnicked on the grass.

The next day I went to Xixi National Wetland Park (西溪国家湿地公园)in the far west part of Hangzhou, said to be the "first and only wetland park" in China.

Sicily BBQ & Pub

Cultural Revolution painting, Jiang village town hall

It's not a wetland park in the sense we usually use the term, but rather is being developed around a village situated around a complex of waterways connected to the Grand Canal. It's still in the process of development, and there are signs it may ultimately succumb to over-commercialization (for example, the "Sicily BBQ & Pub" which greets one near the park entrance).

Deserted Jiang village house

But for the present, one can still see remnants of the life of Jiang Village in its many fish ponds, abundant Shizi fruit trees, and the abandoned houses, most still not restored. Some recently constructed houses had to be abandoned when the Hangzhou government created the park; now they are homes only to birds.


Jiang village waterway

 Theoretically, anyway, one can take a boat from this small town in Zhejiang all the way to Beijing, along the Grand Canal, an engineering feat that dates back to the 7th Century A.D., designed to bring grains from the south to the northern capital.

Ma Yuan, "Viewing Plum  Blossoms by Moonlight"
Southern Song Dynasty (1271-1368)



A week on Hainan island



Dadonghai Beach, Hainan Island

 I’m back in Wuhan as Spring Festival comes to an end with the Lantern Festival tonight (February 17), considered an especially dangerous time for fires and mishaps since in addition to setting off one last great hurrah of fireworks, people are walking around carrying candle-lit lanterns.

My hotel pool at Dadonghai

I spent the last part of the holidays in Sanya city, on the south coast of Hainan Island in China’s far south, my first visit there. For many years Hainan has been a favorite place for Russians to visit, and there are still plenty of Russians about. Much of the signage is Russian as well as Chinese, but the island is now a favorite destination for Chinese tourists. During Spring Festival, prices skyrocket for hotel space and food.

Dadonghai sunset

 
I stayed in a hotel overlooking Dadonghai beach in the eastern part of Sanya city. The beach was always crowded with vacationers, most of them Chinese, sitting under beach umbrellas supplied by the modern resorts lining the beach. Along the beach is an assortment of seaside entertainments: parasailing, scuba diving, jet skiing, paddleboating, sailing, powerboating. It felt more like Miami Beach than the People’s Republic of China but I loved being by the sea, on a warm, tropical beach.

My favorite feature of Dadonghai was the seafood. Outdoor restaurants all over Sanya sell live seafood out of tanks with constantly circulating seawater: clams and cockles and crabs of several types, scallops, oysters, shrimp, spiny lobsters, sea urchins, pompano, puffer fish, groupers and other fish species I couldn’t identify; even cuttlefish, skates, and moray eels. I wondered what a moray eel tastes like but wasn’t curious enough to pony up the $20 a kilo to find out.


Live seafood tanks


Your choice of a meal is netted out of a tank and -- if a fish -- dispatched unceremoniously by being bashed on the pavement before it is carried off to the kitchen. A few minutes later dinner appears. It’s not cheap: shrimp run 45 RMB or about $7 a kilo, shrimp about $8, and a decent-size fish can cost the equivalent of $30. But the fish restaurants, most owned by people from China’s northern provinces, were always crowded with free-spending Chinese visitors.

Seafood dinner

Hainan is also known for its vast assortment of tropical fruit, not only the predictable mangos and papayas but dragon fruit, star fruit, jack fruit, custard apple, aumand, pitaya, a hairy red fruit called simply hong mao dan or “red hair” fruit, something called “mountain bamboo” that looks like a big acorn, and lianwu, a small, crunchy fruit shaped like a bell.


Fruit stand

 When not eating, I traveled around Sanya and to nearby places, though any traveling during the Spring Festival Season can be difficult. The buses to get to a place are crowded with tourists and people going about their business. One fellow got on a bus I was on carrying a box labeled “Whistling Artillery Shells,” which he casually placed at my feet.

Then the place itself is crowded, and the return bus trip can be a nightmare since so many people want to leave at the same time. My first out of town trip was to the Nanshan temple, 25 miles west of town. I had no difficulty getting a bus there, but when I was ready to head back there was massive line of people waiting for the one city bus to Sanya.


Nanshan warning

Order appeared to break down completely as people began to bolt the line and rush incoming buses, banging on their doors to gain entrance. One driver unwisely opened his door, his bus promptly filling with line jumpers. Nevertheless, many others remained patiently in line as a policemen went over to the invaded bus with its panicky passengers and ordered it to pull aside. There it sat, and may still be sitting for all I know.

Meanwhile, those who’d remained in line were ushered on to the appropriate bus. Still, there was pushing and shoving there as well. One elderly man trying to get on the bus was repeatedly shoved aside until I got fed up and, as the tallest person on hand, barred others’ way so he could get on. The policeman, standing on the bus’s top step, said to me, in English, “Thank you.”

Nanshan Bodhisattva

Nanshan was a bit of a frost: there was a $20+ admission cost to what’s called a “Buddhist preaching site,” but the Buddhist temple is a 1998 creation full of dubious replicas and “treasures” such as a Guanyin statue said to contain 100 kilos of gold and silver and 120 carats of South African diamonds. The grounds are nice but unspectacular; they face on a beach that has a giant contemporary statue, also of the Guanyin Bodhisattva. A stone leading to the beach offers to visitors the wise warning, “For your safety, please don’t go to sea,” presumably meaning “No Swimming.” The place is an example of the manufactured “tourism zones” cropping up around the country, aimed at Chinese tourists.

Barbecuing fish, Yalong Bay

My next visit was to Yalong Bay, east of Sanya, a crowded beach facing a naval base. My enduring memory of Yalong is the lunch of coconut milk and barbecued fish I had there, the fish cooked slowly over coals with a crisp, rich, coating of spices I couldn’t identify.

Another day I visited Five Finger Mountain, outside the city of Wuzhishan. The bus route runs beside the long Sanya beach, lined with elaborate resorts, each trying to outdo the other in feats of postmodern architectural exuberance. My favorite example was Dadonghai’s Bao Hong hotel with its “International Club,” a neo-classical dome at one end and bas-relief panels putatively depicting minority folk tales at the other.

Postmodern neoclassical international
Chinese ethnic minority architecture

Five Finger Mountain offered an enjoyable, unhurried walk through a rain forest and a chance to visit a small village and its rice paddies. In the absence of national treasures, it was inexpensive and uncrowded.

My last out of town visit was to Tianya-Haijiao “Scenic Area,” also west of Sanya, another tourist trap touted as “the most romantic tropical paradise of China.” For foreigners, the advertising hype for Tianya-Haijiao, meaning “edge of the sky, rim of the sea,” is almost more interesting than the place itself: Miss World contests have been held there, along with the “New Silk Road Model Contest” and the “International Wedding Festival.” For Chinese people, it has significance as “the end of the earth,” where lovers are prepared to go to meet each other. Next to it was another park which identified itself as “Sanya Greatest World of Love.”

Tianya-Haijao, the end of the world

Most of my time, though, I stayed in Dadonghai, swam in the hotel pool or walked on the beach. One afternoon I visited Sanya’s long, hard sand beach -- uncrowded, spacious, shaded by palm trees and used by local people while tourists jam Dadonghai’s smaller beach -- and inspected its waterfront, wondering if the wealthy in China have taken up boating. Indeed yachts are anchored in the harbor, but most have the logos of companies, and are perhaps intended for company outings or rental.


Sanya Beach

 And I ate at fish restaurants until I tired of seafood and began to seek out restaurants with Russian names and menus offering dishes like “Habenular speculation the new pull-chip” (flat noodles with red and green peppers), or “Dried meat floss cuisine folder land fire” (bread with meat filling). Food, a constant source of interest and amusement in China.

I was going home from downtown Wuhan on a bus last night around dinner time when the driver stopped the bus, hopped off and went into a small restaurant. He took his time, scrutinizing each item while the bus chugged, gurgled and beeped and his passengers waited patiently. No one grumbled at being kept waiting, everyone understood. It was dinner time. My favorite bakery in Dadonghai sold a pastry which boasted on its label that it was “baked to the music of Mozart.” One day I developed a craving for potato chips, but the only potato chips available in Sanya – Lay’s at that – were in flavors: Blueberry, French Chicken, Cucumber and … Lamb.


Yachts in Sanya harbor



Five finger mountain and rice paddies

Ten days in Yunnan

With classes over for the first term and the Spring Festival holiday still days away, I took off for the warmer climate of southern Yunnan province. In Wuhan, there were already signs of the impending Spring Festival crush: the bus station in downtown Wuchang from which I usually catch the airport bus was jammed. In China, even bus stations are equipped with baggage scanners; a huge line had developed behind the single scanner, moving so slowly that finally people began pushing past the gate as a guard tried fruitlessly to stem the tide. And at Kunming’s airport, an equally huge line stood waiting for taxis into the city.

I spent three days in Kunming, five days in Xishuangbanna in the southern part of the province, and two days in Dali in the north. Paula and I had visited Kunming in 1980, but like every other place I’ve visited in China, there was nothing recognizable in today’s Kunming. I spent my time walking the city in warm sunshine, trying to figure out bus routes and find an internet café.

Kunming Street Market

I came across a lively street market near the main downtown plaza and got lost several times. Taxis are hard to get in Kunming, and I got repeatedly lost. On one corner I waited for half an hour to get a cab, along with several other people. When one finally stopped, the couple closest to it insisted I take it, the taxi driver growing increasingly impatient as we tried to outdo each other in politeness. They won.

Singing ensemble, Green Park


My favorite place in town was Green Park, near Yunnan University, where I was staying. Parks are where I spend most of my time when I visit a new city, having seen enough Buddhist and Taoist temples to last me. The parks are where people find an endless number of ways to entertain themselves: flying kites, doing coordinated group dancing, spontaneous singing, walking about, or feeding the Siberian seagulls that populate the park.



Siberian seagull in Green Park

 The Siberian gulls are trim little fellows who seem more like squawky terns; they migrate to Kunming in winter. People like to toss out bits of bread and watch the birds make adroit midair dives to catch the offering, or quarrel noisily with others over bread that has dropped in the lake. Hawkers are positioned all around the lake to sell loaves of bread.




Yunnan military academy

  Mostly, untutored by map or guidebook, I stumble on things by accident, like the old Yunnan Military Academy on one side of the park, a piece of China’s republican history that isn’t mentioned in guide books.

It was established by the Qing Dynasty to train officers for the New Army the Qing hoped to use to retain its power and expel foreigners, and was the predecessor to the famous Whampoa Military Academy in Guangzhou. New Army officers ultimately took the Republican side as the Qing Dynasty collapsed, and the Yunnan school produced two of the most famous Communist leaders, Zhu De and Ye Jianying. There’s increasing interest in the pre-Communist Republican history of China and a fairly extensive museum had been set up on the Academy’s history which honored pre-1949 Republican military figures as well as the Communist ones.

From Kunming’s small and rather disorganized airport I flew to Jinghong, the main city in the southern Yunnan area of Xixshuangbanna. One of the great pleasures of traveling in China now is that wide-open competition for passengers among the innumerable local and regional airlines means you can buy cheap tickets at one of many ticket brokers on the street the day before you want to fly somewhere, or change your plans and acquire a new ticket, sometimes with no penalty. I arranged my roundtrip ticket from Kunming to Jinhong the day before I left, at a cost of $115, though all flight and hotel prices will skyrocket during Spring Festival.

Jinghong street

Jinghong feels like culturally like Southeast Asia. The days are steamy, the streets lined with palms lit green at night. The only t-shirts you can get in the markets say “Thailand.” There are dozens of small shops selling Burmese jade, or what is claimed to be Burmese jade by the multi-ethnic salesmen. Jinghong is a favorite hangout for foreigners who like its relaxed ambience and for trekkers on their way to Dali, “Shangri-la,” Tiger Leaping Gorge, or to one of the many small minority villages in Yunnan. It’s simple to get to these places: you just walk down any street and look for shops selling bus tickets.

Fighting Cock venue, Jinghong

I had plans to get out of Jinghong for a couple of days and visit outlying villages but was seduced by the comforts of good restaurants, nice parks, and the lassitude that instantly overcomes me in tropical climates. I visited every park in the city, walked around neighborhoods where cockfighting was the main recreation (“No pictures!” I was instructed by someone preparing to drop his rooster into combat, since theoretically cockfighting isn’t legal), and only roused myself once to travel by bus to Menghan, which someone had recommended.



"Water-splashing" event, Dai minority park

 Menghan consists of a rather ordinary town with an interesting market and, at some distance, something called the “Dai Minority Park,” where for a considerable entrance fee one can walk about a Dai village, or a representation of one, each of the traditional-style houses now offering food or an overnight stay, attend a contrived “water-splashing” and an even hokier cultural show.

Dai Cultural Park, Menghan

It’s a well-organized way to extract money from tourists, although the most entertaining part of it for me was the “Tourism civilized behavior guidelines” sign posted at the entrance, which affirmed the need for a “civilized and homonymous tourist environment” and provided instructions we could all of us live by, including:

• Observe public order. No noise and following the queue. Do not obstruct road by parallel walking or speak loudly in public place.
• Do not trample the green land, pluck flowers, snap trees or pick fruit. And not to chase, catch or beat animals, and don’t feed them randomly.
• Never gain petty advantages while being greedy. And don’t waste food.
• Do not force to take photos with foreign guest. Do not sneeze in the face of others. Do not occupy the public facilities for a very long time.
• Topless is not acceptable in public. Provide a helping hand to those who are old, little, weak and disabled. Remember lady first and avoid vulgarities.
• Advocate healthy lifestyle. Resist feudal and superstitious activities, and say no to pornography, gambling and drug abuse.



"Minority cultural event" at Dai Minority park

  After a few days resisting feudal and superstitious activities in Jinghong, I took the bus to Dali, which is two cities, a modern one, indistinguishable from others of its kind except for being beautifully situated between a mountain range and Erhai Lake, and the old walled city, seven kilometers distant. A taxi took me to the old city where I had the address for a hotel outside the city walls; either the address was wrong or the hotel no longer existed.

It was cold, the streets were empty, I had no idea where I was in relation to the old city as I stood there with my rollaround suitcase. Nearby was an unpromising place with a faded sign, the Long Yuan Binguan, from which someone emerged to invite me in. It was there I stayed for my two nights in Dali, a cheap and very basic (no soap) but friendly place with a great view of the mountains.

Snack Island on Erhai Lake

Dali is a bit of a tourist trap, the streets of the old city lined with shops selling jade, minority crafts, and bus tickets to Lijiang, Shangri-La and Kunming. On my second day I joined a Chinese tour group for a boat trip on one of the giant tour boats that ply Erhai lake. The boat goes from place to place on the lake, each stop providing a fresh occasion to help tourists get rid of some of their money: a miniature “snack island” at one point (whole fish on a stick), “Butterfly Spring” at another, associated with a legend about a pair of lovers who turned into butterflies to escape persecution.

On one long passage of the trip, tourists are ushered into an onboard auditorium for a “Three courses of Tea” show by “Dali Bai Ethnic groups,” which includes a mock-wedding ceremony to recorded music so deafening that people were holding their hands over their ears. In the last part of the trip we were taken to Chongsheng Temple, one of the reconstructed temple complexes sprouting everywhere, but with a great view of the lake and mountains.

"Ancient"Dali street

At the end of the day, after using the internet at a little café and having a confusing conversation in Chinese with a young man there who praised President Obama and a ‘nu’ person, a female person, whom I took to be Michelle Obama but turned out to be Hilary Clinton, I stopped at a Muslim restaurant near my hotel for dinner. It was late, the restaurant was half closed, but the family let me in and showed me a cooler full of fresh vegetables and some cuts of beef. I made my choices, not knowing what I’d end up with. I was served five dishes: tofu and green onions, eggplant, a green vegetable soup, rice, and an excellent beef dish with finely chopped garlic stems. As I was eating, fireworks were going off in the street. One of the family’s children stood in the street with a slender stick that shot out fireball after fireball. Spring Festival was approaching.

It’s now February 4, and Spring Festival is in full swing. On the night of February 2 there were fireworks all around East Lake in front of my apartment building, reaching a thunderous crescendo at midnight as the reign of the Rabbit began. There are still occasional bursts of fireworks but most people are on the road, crowding bus and train stations and airports all over the country. I’ll be packing myself into the airport bus tomorrow for a visit to Hainan Island, China’s southernmost province.

Three pagodas at Chongsheng temple complex