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

Short trip to Shanghai

I made a quick trip to Shanghai last weekend on the high speed train. The regular Wuhan-Shanghai train takes half a day; the high speed train, which hits 250 km an hour, takes five hours or less, depending on the number of stops. It’s a sleek, efficient, classy operation. Snack carts are piloted by women dressed in smart outfits – looking like old-line airline stewardesses. Attendants pass through the cars constantly picking up after passengers. Vast new train stations have been built or are under construction in Shanghai and Wuhan to accommodate the high speed system, which will eventually extend over much of the country.

Nanjing Road department store

This was my first visit to Shanghai since August, 1980, when I spent much of the time listening to shortwave broadcasts of the Democratic National Convention. I remembered especially Ted Kennedy’s inspiring “The cause endures” speech at the convention, and my regret he wasn’t nominated, opening the door, as it turned out, for Reagan’s ruinous presidency.

On my first day in Shanghai in 1980 I met a couple of students who offered to guide me to the Yu garden, one of the city’s tourist sights. En route, the two were taken away by a plainclothes security person, without a word to me. Shanghai then had a façade of modernization unknown elsewhere in China: there were billboards for foreign products, women wore short skirts, little children waved and said “Hello, uncle!” on the streets. But underneath the surface was harsh social control.

Pudong area

That kind of overt police action probably wouldn’t occur in today’s Shanghai, China’s commercial and cultural center. The streets are full of foreigners, some of them obviously residents. One European woman was walking her two spaniels, dressed in neat little jackets with their names in Chinese. She spent some time explaining to me the difference between English and Springer spaniels.

Vuitton trunk

Across from old colonial buildings along the Bund, facing the Whampoa River, is glaringly modern Pudong, in 1980 not much more than a mud flat. Nanjing Lu, always the city’s chief shopping area, is chockablock with high end stores selling imported luxury goods. Vuitton, a designer brand much favored for copying by enterprising shanzhai pirates, has erected a giant retro steamer trunk on Nanjing Lu, as if to say, “Get your real Vuitton here.” Things had changed so much I was only slightly surprised to see a Salvation Army band playing.

Band on Nanjing Lu

It turned out not to be Salvation Army; judging from the uniforms, they were retired PLA musicians. I’ll be making other trips to Shanghai later. This week I’m headed for a week in warmer parts of the country: Kunming and Yunnan province in southern China.

Snowfall by East Lake

Happy New Year. The Year of the Rabbit: a peaceful year after the year of the Tiger.

Christmas visit to Guizhou province

Guiyang strawberries


During Paula’s Christmas visit to China we took the overnight train from chilly Wuhan to Guizhou Province in southern China, where strawberries were being sold on the streets. Guizhou is one of China’s poorest provinces, although one couldn’t tell it from Guiyang's expensive hotels, Modern Woman Hospital, and high end stores: at the newly opened French-owned Carrefour store primo bottles of Guizhou Moutai, a potent liquor, are on offer for 28,800 RMB, about $4500.


Guiyang's delivery men

 At night, however, as the streets clear of shoppers, “delivery men” who spend their days walking the streets looking for small jobs sleep in ranks on the sidewalks, using their baskets as pillows.

In a park adjoining the National Culture Palace, snake oil salesman, fortune tellers, singing bird aficionados, sidewalk calligraphers and “Tuo luo” players passed the time. The last involves striking a spinning top with a whip to make it hum eerily. Taking singing birds for an outing, most often “Hwamei,” the Laughing Thrush, in distinctive bamboo cages suspended by large silver hooks, is another favorite hobby in southern China.


Fortune teller (with parakeet)

The National Culture Palace and Hotel is an imposing, oddly-shaped building dedicated to the minority cultures of mountainous Guizhou: Dong, Bouyei, Miao, Yao, Shui and others. The museum isn’t well publicized -- Paula and I wandered through empty display rooms, the only visitors—but interesting for its displays of jewelry and minority costumes.The touristic potential of minority cultures is being exploited as Guizhou develops its tourist industry. A tour we took to Huanguoshu Falls included a stop at a manufactured “Miao village.”

Qianling Park performance

 At Qianling Park, we watched an impromptu classical dance performance while someone played a saxophone on the hillside. An older man told us about Americans who’d been in Guiyang during the anti-Japanese war, and gave us a rule sheet for “Digital Army Military Chess,” designed “just for the foreigners who don’t know Chinese.” The rules are not entirely clear and even a bit alarming (e.g. “Without the engineer troop to dig the mine, can’t win the other side unless use the bomb”) but he gathered a crowd around as he talked to us about his time in Wuhan during the war, and the decline of the “English corner” in the park. The slogan was taken down, he said, referring to red banners routinely hung to make announcements: “Without a slogan they won’t come,” he said regretfully, and then, to the admiring crowd: “Practice makes perfect!”


Feeding macaques, Qianling park

 For Paula the high point of Qianling Park was watching the resident population of macaques, who ran free in the more wooded portions cadging food from visitors. Signs asking visitors not to feed the animals were ignored by monkeys and people. One woman appeared with an armful of Ding Dong-like pastries wrapped in plastic, which the monkeys clearly liked.

Bronze statue,Jiaxiu pavilion

From the National Culture Palace we walked along a river walk beside the Nanming River to Jiaxiu pavilion, a symbol of the city, built during the Ming Dynasty to provide a place for aspiring scholars to prepare for the imperial examinations. A statue beside the river walk depicted a man fishing with a slender bronze pole; we wondered how long a work like this would survive in the U.S. without being vandalized.

Ceremonial opening, countryside

On our second full day in Guiyang we took a public bus to Tienhetuan, past Guizhou’s distinctive mountains, looking like sculpted burial mounds. There was much evidence of the government’s efforts to develop the economy of rural areas and thereby reduce the massive migration to China’s cities. On one hillside a long line of construction equipment had been arranged to complement the festive opening of what would probably be an industrial plant.

Tourism is also being developed, though we were the only foreigners on the bus to Tienhetuan, and found ourselves alone as we made our way through a long, elaborately lighted cave complex. We were mildly alarmed at the thought that no one knew we were in the cave, nor did we have any idea how long the cave trail was.

Huanguoshu Falls

On our last full day in Guiyang we joined a tour to Huanguoshu Falls, one of China’s largest waterfalls and Guizhou’s most famous sight. An all-day affair, the tour included a visit to a fake Miao village and two sales stops, one plugging a knife set, the other local food specialties. These sales stops are a normal part of tours for Chinese visitors, who like to load up on the local food items.

Huanguoshu Falls, modestly identified on a sign as the “No 1 marvellous and wonderful one for the world” is spectacular, not in an overwhelming Niagara Falls sense, but for the way the falling water interweaves with rocks and vegetation. One can climb up to a spray-drenched trail, called Water Curtain Cave, which passes behind the falling water.

Dragon Palace cave

Entrance to Dragon Palace

Also on the tour was Dragon Palace, a karst cave with ragged curtains of stone at its entrance. Visitors enter the cave in little electrically-powered boats, cruising passages with names in Chinese and English (one identified as “Hole-hole”) into large, cathedral-like rooms , lit in technicolor and accompanied by classical Chinese music on the boat’s sound system. Silence might have been preferable, but silence isn’t popular in China.

Tianxing Scenic area



Fellow travelers












A final stop was at the Tianxing scenic area, a quiet, beautiful promenade through striking rock formations along a walkway of large stones, water flowing between them and submerging all but the very top of each stone. By that time we had become part of the Chinese tour group, especially an extended family of three generations, who were always checking to be sure the two Americans weren’t lost. 

Paula and I were back in Wuhan to celebrate New Year's Eve. With the power out in my apartment building, we lit candles and toasted the New Year with Austrian champagne.


Learning calligraphy, Guiyang market


 

Hangzhou in a weekend



Musical fountain show

 Earlier in December I made a flying visit to Hangzhou, which I’d last visited in 1980. Then I’d stayed at the Xiling Hotel, across the street from West Lake. My room was 9 RMB a night -- less than $15. The Xiling has since been absorbed into the five star “Shangri-la,” rooms a minimum of $150. This is a good index of what’s happened to Hangzhou in thirty years. The plain streets of downtown Hangzhou ca. 1980 are neon lit and lined with high end fashion stores. Sites that have attracted tourists for centuries have been fixed up and admission charges levied.

Leifeng Pavilion, latest version

There are new sights, like the free musical fountain show on West Lake, where jets of water from a hundred nozzles accompany classical European and Chinese musical pieces.

There are old sights that have been reborn, like Leifeng Pavilion, situated at the lake’s southeast end on a hill that makes it visible all around the lake. It’s been violently destroyed and patiently rebuilt for centuries. The most recent rebuilding, in 2000, features an escalator to take visitors from the mysteriously named “Pond for Freeting the living thinge” to the hilltop, where there’s a great, if sometimes hazy, view of West Lake and the city beyond from the top deck of the pagoda.

West Lake amusements

The pond probably has some connection to one of the innumerable stories connected to the pavilion and Hangzhou, in this case the legend of Bai Suzhen, 白蛇传, Lady White Snake, an immortal who fell in love with a monk and was punished with confinement under the pagoda for eternity. All around the lake are inscriptions and monuments celebrating similar events, real or mythical, in the city’s long history.

At one end of Xilin Bridge, on Su causeway which bisects the lake, is the rebuilt tomb of Su Xiao Xiao, a 5th Century poet and courtesan whose life was the subject of many Tang dynasty poems. Xiao Xiao’s tomb was rebuilt recently after its destruction during the Cultural Revolution, an event which left a heavy mark on this city of monuments and religious icons.




Writing with water beside West Lake

 


Xiling Seal Engravers' Society

 West Lake remains a beauty spot beyond compare, not only for the lake itself but for the living culture continually going on around it. Near the Leifeng pavilion two elderly musicians were playing erhus when I walked by, another keeping time on a wooden clacker, while women took turns singing and joking with each other. Several people were writing poems on the walkway using pointed brushes dipped in water. Further on people were doing wushu and qigong exercises under the trees, walking with their families, or sitting on benches looking out at the Lake.

The Xiling Seal Engravers’ Society (西泠印社) still looks much as it did when I last stopped there: an attractive group of old buildings climbing up a steep hillside. Though seal-cutting is an ancient art, the Society itself is of recent vintage, founded in 1904 by seal artists from different schools, dedicated, says a sign, to research in “epigraphy and sphragistics.” Now, though, it’s mainly a place where seals are engraved and sold to tourists. I went there to get a birthday seal for Margaret.


View from Felai Feng

 On Saturday I took a bus out to the Wuling Mountains to see the Lingyin Temple and climb Felai Feng mountain, (飞来峰; literally "the peak that flew hither"), referring to the belief the mountain came from India bringing with it the sutras of Chan Buddhism. During the Cultural Revolution the Temple and figures in adjacent cave grottoes had been damaged. The Temple has been repaired but the headless stone figures remain, beside a sign saying in English, “It is a pity that the head parts had been damaged.”

Among the temples forming part of the Lingyin complex is the Lingshun temple, dedicated to Marshal Zhao Gong, god of wealth. This temple is said to be especially popular with local businessmen, and there was evidence; among the many offerings to the Marshal (so called because he has under him four lower gods in charge of property, treasure, rare collections, and the market – divine hedge fund managers) was a large stack of black briefcases.

Sunset over West Lake

Hangzhou from Baoshan

On Sunday I walked with a local friend up Bao Shan, a hill overlooking West Lake’s northwest end. It’s a favorite spot for people to hang out on a nice day, flirt, picnic, play the flute, bring singing birds in bamboo cages to hang from trees, or read inscriptions that have been cut into rocks over the centuries, some with remarks by Tang or Han Dynasty emperors on the beauty of the view or the coming of spring (though one emperor concluded his remarks on the natural setting by adding “there’s too much bamboo”).

Huang Binhong statue

On the way back to my hotel I stopped at the western-style home of Huang Binhong, a painter who died in 1955. Hangzhou is a town where painters and calligraphers are celebrated. Huang was famous for his dense, thick, modernistic style; he was among a new breed of literati fostered by China’s first republican revolution.

I was reminded of the importance of that first revolutionary period again at the statue near West Lake of Qiu Jin, a schoolteacher executed for leading an abortive uprising against the Manchu dynasty in 1907. Finally, I visited the Zhejiang provincial museum, not a large museum but with some of the most interesting pottery I’d seen, from the Three Kingdoms and Eastern Han dynasty periods.

I thought I’d end this blog with a picture of one of the most beguiling items in the museum: a Happy Family pot from the Eastern Han. From my happy family to yours, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Paula arrives in Wuhan today, and after visiting with friends she hasn’t seen in thirty years and looking around today’s go-go Wuhan, where she won’t recognize a thing, we’ll be taking the train to Guizhou, a province to the south known for beautiful scenery and a relative lack of economic development. My next blog will be from there.