Tourist Sites

“Where you visit in China?” asked the middle-aged Chinese businessman with whom we shared a table at the Beijing airport café (a not-uncommon custom in China -- in a nation of a billion people, you don’t waste seats just because you don’t know someone).

“Only Beijing, Xi’an and Shanghai,” we replied. “Not too much time, too short to see such a big country.”

“Ah,” he smiled. “But you see all times in China -- Beijing present, Xi’an past, Shanghai future.”

I had never heard it put that way, but I really like it. Xi’an (pronounced she-AHN) was the capital of China from before the time of Christ, under the first emperor to unify the country, Qin Shi Huang. He was a brilliant military strategist who brought China together at sword-point, but he lacked diplomacy and was a bit of a megalomaniac. He had a massive tomb built starting when he was still in his thirties, then had the architects killed (Dale Carnegie would not approve...) and ultimately was buried there with a huge army of life-size warriors fashioned from terra cotta, each completely unique. Rediscovered by local farmers digging a well in 1974, this has become one of China’s biggest tourist draws. And it is quite fascinating.

Ever wonder how people forget there is something like this buried beneath them?

”Boy, after two millenia, I really can’t wait to get out of this dirt and have a bath...”

While Europe languished in the Dark Ages, Xi’an was the center of the world. It was the beginning and end of the Silk Road, and traders from all over the world made their way there. The present-day city walls, the best-preserved of any city in China, date from the Ming dynasty in the 1400s and stretch 14 miles around the city center. If you think that’s impressive, consider that the Tang dynasty walls in 800 A.D. were seven times larger.

Fun to walk around; scaling, not so much

Xi’an today is unfortunately a not-all-that-picturesque city of 5 million. Inside the walls it is mostly broad boulevards and high-rise hotels...

Looking toward the ancient Bell Tower

...but there are pockets of very beautiful and historic old houses built of the city’s distinctive gray brick.

A bustling market street near the walls, restored to medievaly goodness

From Xi’an, we zipped forward in time what seemed about 4,000 years, to Shanghai, China’s bustling east coast metropolis and showcase of wildly futuristic architecture.

The Pudong New Area, home to science fiction-style buildings like the Oriental Pearl TV Tower

Arriving at the airport, we took the world’s only implemented Maglev train (Magnetic Levitation for non-geeks, in which the train hovers over the track on big opposing magnets) into the city -- a 35km journey that takes 8 minutes. The cars driving toward the airport beside the track flash by so quickly, it looks like they are speeding in the opposite direction.

I am not making this up

Shanghai has a rather interesting history; in the mid-1800s it became the Chinese colonial trade center for England, France, and America, and by the 1920s it was the greatest Western city in the East after Hong Kong. Home to banks and shipping companies, brothels and opium dens, it was the Paris of the Orient (or the Whore of the Orient, depending on whom you talked to). Stretching along the west bank of the Huangpu River opposite Pudong is the Bund, a street of beautiful Art Deco skyscrapers that rivalled New York in their day.

Memories of Shanghai’s Jazz Age

Incidentally, Lynn’s sister Jane (a John Denver fan) inquired whether there were in fact “Shanghai Breezes,” as he sang about in a song. Standing on the promenade overlooking the Bund, we can categorically deny the existance of breezes in Shanghai -- gales is more like it; it was very windy.

The Roaring ‘20s in Shanghai weren’t all galas, gambling and gangsters, though. Shanghai was the birthplace of the Chinese Communist Party, which “liberated” the city in 1949 during the Communist/Nationalist civil war. The Customs House on the Bund with its giant clock tower modelled after Big Ben, once a symbol of Western colonial profit-taking, became a broadcast tower for propaganda during the Cultural Revolution.

The triumph of the people over capitalist oppression, Shanghai style

But those days are so far past in Shanghai they might as well be buried with Xi’an’s terra cotta warriors. Today, Shanghai’s streets are flooded with expats doing business and locals shopping for the latest handbags from Gucci or Coach (some of them even non-counterfeit!). Like Beijing, or perhaps even more so, Shanghai is a city firmly faced forward, proudly displaying its past, but rushing to embrace its future.

Whatever tomorrow holds, Shanghai is ready to embrace it

For two weeks in August, Beijing stepped to the front of the world stage, and served notice that it is a metropolis ready to join the ranks of the world’s alpha cities.

The Bird’s Nest: it’s not just for soup anymore

There is perhaps no other nation on earth that is modernizing more rapidly, and today’s China is far less about...

Long live the glorious people’s revolution

...than...

The National Grand Theatre: the mothership has landed

Or so one would think from first impressions of the city, which has more newly-constructed glitzy skyscrapers and fantastic modern architecture than you can shake an Olympic gold medal at. Or would, if you could see them...

Smog over Tian’anmen Square

We arrived here on Sunday the 12th from Seoul, and were immediately struck by how different Beijing is from our expectations. Oh, sure, the major tourist sights are the icons of its imperial past:

The Forbidden City

The Summer Palace

The Great Wall at Jinshanling

But this is not your father’s China. Today, the subway is full of posters for LG and Toyota rather than communist propaganda. You only have to spend a few hours walking among Beijing’s fashionably-dressed young people, more interested in their cellphones than Chairman Mao’s little red book, to realize that this is a country that is undergoing a second Cultural Revolution -- and one that is potentially even greater in its impact on Chinese society.

The future of China: you can’t fool the children of the revolution

The China of old, with its olive-drab uniform of communist conformity, has crumbled under the weight of a new consumer-driven culture that appears content to coexist with the totalitarian political system. This is really not surprising when you consider how deeply ingrained capitalism is in the soul of the Chinese people -- as the hoards of souvenir hawkers will attest. One old lady, “Ginger,” hiked with us for an hour on a very strenuous portion of the Great Wall, teaching us Chinese and "helping" Lynn up steep steps, all as prelude to pulling out a picture book and starting the sales pitch. That’s commitment to profit.

But step away from the neon and glitter of Beijing’s main thoroughfares, and you discover just how thin the veneer of modernity can be. For every brand-new modern edifice, there is a centuries-old hutong (alley) full of traditional courtyard houses, where life clings to the old ways of public baths and coal-burning stoves.

Out for a late afternoon stroll

In this Beijing, old men still gather in doorways to play mah jong and haircuts are given on a stool in the square. We paused in a particularly evocative alley, and an old lady invited us in to see her two-room, coal-heated apartment (she didn’t seem to care that we spoke no Chinese, she happily carried both sides of the conversation).

This hutong is home to at least 6 families

A common tongue isn’t necessary for friendship

Beijing is a city in transition, and we found that most evident in the faces of her people. I will close this post by letting them tell their own stories.

On Monday, September 8th (which already feels like a lifetime ago, but more on that in the next post...), we arrived in Nara, a smallish city that is part of the great urban sprawl known as the Kansai. This large mass of human habitation combines Osaka, Kyoto, Kobe and others into Japan’s second-largest megalopolis. Like Tokyo and Yokohama, Osaka and Kobe are pretty much one big endless city; Kyoto and Nara are both about a half-hour’s train ride through rolling hills. Nara was our choice for a home base from which to explore the region.

The city of Nara from the surrounding hills

In the 7th century, Nara became Japan’s first capital city, and during this period the world’s largest wooden structure, the Todai-Ji temple, was built.

The entry to the Todai-ji: burn some incense for good luck

Now, when I say the world’s largest wooden building, I know what you’re thinking -- “Hmm, OK, it’s the world’s largest wooden building. *yawn* What else ya got?” I know this, because we thought the same thing when we read the description in the guidebook. “Well, it’s the world’s largest wooden building, and the reason people come to Nara. I suppose we should go see it.”

What you fail to comprehend is that this temple is big. I mean, really big. Words and especially little pictures on a blog in no way communicate the immense hugeness of the Todai-ji. You don’t even realize how big it is from a distance. You see the thing from a fair way off as you’re walking up to it, and you think you’re not that far away; then the walk is a lot longer than you thought and the temple just keeps looming bigger and bigger. When we finally stood at the bottom of the front steps, we both looked at each other and said, “This thing is really... big.”

For perspective, note the size of the people in the doorway

Oh, and for the record, the current building was built in the 16th century after the first one burned down... and it’s only two-thirds the size of the original.

Inside the Todai-ji is a very large (of course) bronze Buddha. It is also quite amazingly huge. And again, you don’t really realize how big it is when you’re first looking at it, until you notice a guy standing in front of it for perspective.

”I’m the Buddha, and I am way bigger (and more enlightened) than you will ever be.”

We stayed in Nara with a very pleasant couple, Mayumi Anzai and Rob (never got his last name). Mayumi runs a restaurant called the Cafe Youan in the old part of the city.

Mayumi and Rob, hard at work in the cafe kitchen

She lives in the rooms upstairs and starting hosting couchsurfers. Rob came to visit, wound up staying for a while, and they became an item and he’s been there since (apparently, they are not the first host/guest couple who have met through Couch Surfing...). Mayumi is quite the whiz in the kitchen, and whipped up a fantastic batch of veggie tempura for us while we were there.

Oh, and that salad in the foreground? Seaweed -- the Japanese love it... imagine wet spinach

The next day, we took the train an hour or so west to Japan’s most perfectly-preserved medieval castle, the Himeji-jo.

Himeji-jo castle: Samurai not included

Through most of the Middle Ages, Japan was a collection of feuding city-states. Each local warlord built his own castle like this, with a massive central tower. When the extremely ruthless shogun Ieyasu Tokugawa consolidated control in Tokyo in the 16th century, most castles were destroyed, but Himeji-jo fortunately was spared.

Muskets inside the castle

Now, I have always found this phase of Japanese history fascinating -- bushido, the samurai code of honor, the Jesuit missionaries and persecution of Christians under the Tokugawas, etc. I think it started when I played Ko-Ko, the inept Lord High Executioner in Gilbert & Sullivan’s brilliant comic operetta The Mikado, in eighth grade. Pardon me for a brief lyric interlude from its opening chorus...

If you want to know who we are, we are gentlemen of Japan
On many a vase and jar, on many a screen and fan
We figure in lively paint, our attitudes queer and quaint
You’re wrong if you think it ain’t...

I venture off into this cultural tangent only because this traditional view of the Japanese culture it portrays...

...is so far from the reality of today. As was illustrated to us that evening when we stopped in Osaka on our way back to have dinner in Dotombori, the riverside entertainment district.

Today’s “gentlemen of Japan” posing amid the Dotombori neon

Osaka is Japan’s Chicago -- a hard-working, broad-shouldered merchant city that really knows how to cut loose and have a good time. They even have a unique slang word, kuiadore, that means to eat and drink until you collapse (thank you, Anthony Bourdain, for inspiring us to stop and experience it). And they have a specialty that I was dying to try: okonomiyaki, an omelette-like pancake of egg, cabbage, and meat smothered in mayonnaise and barbeque sauce that you cook yourself on a griddle-table. Sounds kind of nasty, but darn tasty: good, solid, hard-working-and-partying “Take your fancy sashimi and shove it” food.

Eggs and chopsticks: a difficult combination to master

We spent two days exploring Kyoto, which is kind of like going to Italy and spending only two days in Florence -- there’s so much to see there, you can barely scratch the surface in a week, let alone a couple of days. At first glance, Kyoto is not a particularly attractive city; the visitor expecting to step off the train into a woodblock print of old Japan is facing disappointment. For starters, the train station itself is a modern architectural wonderland...

Kyoto station: keep taking the escalators up and don't look down

...and the city itself is, well, just a city.

Downtown Kyoto from the 15th floor of the station -- which, yes, has 15 floors

Like an oyster, Kyoto’s exterior is tough, gray, and ugly, and you have to work hard to pry it open.

Nice metaphor, eh?

Well, I can’t extend it to come up with something in Kyoto to compare to the nasty filter-feeding creature inside... but the point is that deep inside if you look hard enough, you find beautiful pearls. Peaceful shrines, tree-lined canals, geisha hurrying to appointments in the alleys of the Gion entertainment district: this is the real Kyoto, and it’s waiting for the patient seeker to find it. I’ll let the pictures do the rest of the talking...

Torii in the Fushimi-Inari shrine, made famous in the movie Memoirs of a Geisha

Wearing kimonos for a walk in the bamboo forest

Wooden bridge in the Arashiyama district in the waning sunlight

Strolling along the Philosopher’s Walk

Backstreets of Gion

Two maiko, apprentice geisha, out in their finery at dusk

It seems appropriate that Kyoto is the very soul of Japan, because it has a talent for working its way into your soul and making you sorry to leave it.

And so, with our time in Japan ending and the necessity of our return to the United States looming, we headed back to Tokyo aboard the shinkansen, or bullet train -- one of Japan’s most iconic engineering marvels. Head to the station and find your platform...

Smile in wonder as the sleek white machine glides to halt almost silently...

And settle in as you are whisked past the Japanese countryside at over 250 miles per hour.

A very pleasant way to begin a not-so-pleasant detour.

We climbed a mountain, but Fuji-San wasn’t there.

We crossed the water, but Fuji-San wasn’t there.

We flew through the sky, but Fuji-San wasn’t there.

So we took a train somewhere else, and Fuji-San still wasn’t there.

“Ah, Fuji-San is very shy,” said the lady who ran the B&B we stayed at in Moto-Hakone, a mountain town by the shore of Lake Ashi, near Mount Fuji. It’s no surprise that we weren’t able to see Japan’s iconic volcano, really -- summer is very humid here and the sky is hazy. You can really only be sure of seeing Fuji-San (the suffix “-San” is used as both an honorific title, like “Mister,” and a word that means “Mount”) in the winter, when the air is totally clear. At other times, Fuji-San mostly remains bashfully cloaked in a swath of clouds.

It’s OK that we came to the mountains of central Japan and didn’t get to see Fuji-San, though. There’s plenty else to do and see in this resort area, including hiking on cedar-lined trails that were once the main highway between Kyoto and Tokyo...

The old Tokaido Highway. You can almost hear the clip-clop of the hooves of a passing samurai’s horse.

...As well as soaking in onsens, spas that feature baths in natural hot springs.

Obviously, I couldn’t take pictures inside the baths, because they were full of naked people, including us. And my camera has a phobia of hot steamy water. This is the outside of the Ten Zan onsen.

Japan sits smack-dab on top of one of the most geothermally active parts of the planet, and hot water bubbles up from below all over the place. The Japanese love to soak themselves in it; in fact, they say that the onsen is the only part of their culture that is uniquely Japanese, not imported from mainland Asia.

Some onsens are free, but most cost anywhere from $10-25 to visit. You take off your shoes upon entering (like almost everyplace else in Japan) and pay your fee, then men and women go their separate ways. You put your clothes in a locker and take a shower (major faux pas to go into a public bath without cleaning the naughty bits first), sitting down on a bench and washing, using a bowl to rinse yourself. You have a sweat in the nuclear-hot sauna if you like, then step outside into the rotemburo, a series of pools of various degrees of heat and bubblocity. Most of the pools are lined with natural rock and nestled in overhanging foliage. It’s quite beautiful, and very relaxing. Settle in, and if you’re going totally Japanese, drape the little towel you use to cover yourself outside the baths over your head.

After a good long soak in the bath of your choice, you shower off again, put on a yukata (light cotton kimono) and relax with tea and a book. It’s all very peaceful and reinvigorating after a long day hiking (or slaving in the office, if you’re Japanese).

Nothing but the sound of the waterfall outside

After a couple of Fuji-less days in Hakone, we moved on to Takayama, a small city on the edge of the Japan Alps.

Takayama from the foothills

The riverside old town has beautiful streets lined with perfectly preserved wooden and half-timber houses built during the era of the Shoguns, from the 17th-19th centuries.

Edo-era shops and houses

Waiting for a fare

Needless to say, it’s a very popular weekend trip for Japanese families.

”I refuse to smile for foreigners just because I look so darn cute in my kimono!"

Takayama is full of ryokans, traditional Japanese inns.

Ryokan Irori Sosuke

For about $100 per night, you get your own futon in a tatami-lined room with sliding paper doors, a yukata, and a bath down the hall.

I think I’m turning Japanese, I think I’m turning Japanese, I really think so...

For a bit more, you can get meals downstairs, by the irori, the small fireplace in the living room.

Inside the ryokan

Refreshed from our time in the mountains even if we didn’t see Fuji-San, we headed onward to the cultural heart of Japan, the Kansai region: a big conurbation of the cities of Kyoto, Osaka, Kobe, and our destination -- Nara, Japan’s 7th century capital and home to the world’s largest wooden building, the Todai-ji temple.

Whenever I travel, I always keep a diary. I inevitably get behind. This has now happened with our blog as well... But I'm still trying to post every 3-4 days, it's just that there's so much! Plus, I'm kind of going in thematic order rather than strict order of time.

On Saturday, August 23rd, we headed down the Sarawak River from Kuching for Santubong, a rainforest-blanketed penninsula to the north. The name “rainforest” was certainly applicable based on the weather, which alternated between light drizzle and hard downpours.

Mount Santubong rising above the Sarawak River

We spent a couple of much-needed days resting at the Permai Rainforest Resort, an eco-resort tucked into the rainforest above Damai beach. It’s a beautiful place, and was a perfect break within our trip. It was rustic without being nasty (we’ve had plenty of nasty already; did I mention our disgusting place in Kuta?), and we had a lovely treehouse that was a great place to sleep in, hang out, and read and write.

Our tree-top castle

With our batteries recharged, we did venture into the rainforest for a strenuous and very drippy (from sweat -- even when it isn’t hot, it’s so humid you still wind up drenched) hike.

Don’t look down, just keep moving!

”Honey, we’re gonna need a bigger bottle of wine...

The Santubong penninsula is also home to the Sarawak Cultural Village, an outdoor folk museum where they have assembled traditional tribal longhouses from all over the area.

The Sarawak Cultural Village

We really love these kinds of places, and it was a very enjoyable afternoon (in the rain, again) checking out the various artistic styles of the Iban, Bidayuh, and other local tribes, who live in communal dwellings where each family has a room that opens onto one long central common area. Nowadays, they are mostly constructed with tin roofs and satellite dishes, of course, but the traditional wooden ones at the Village were fascinating.

Various longhouses

They also have costumed staff who describe their native crafts, as well as a dance show that mostly cool and only a bit cheesy.

Iban woman demonstrating cutting bamboo strips for weaving baskets

Iban dancer, with characteristic tattoos

Now in Kuching, they actually run tours to the real longhouses that the Dayak tribes still live in. You can go upriver and visit the longhouses, and even stay there overnight. We were going to do that, but we only had time for a daytrip, and the closest one where they all go sees a lot of visitors, so we ultimately decided against it. We got lazy and just settled for the "culture in a can" route at the Cultural Village.

As is so often the case after a rainy day, the sun broke through just in time for a beautiful sunset -- just before we left.