China

Misadventures in China: The Golden Girls' Grand Tour
August 2002
ON THE SECOND WEEK OF OUR GRAND CHINA TOUR we decided to take a break at McDonald's, in Chengdu. We had just come down from Lhasa, Tibet, where at an altitude of 13,000 feet we had all gotten sick from the thin air, with palpitations, shortness of breath, nausea, light-headedness, and terrible, pulsating squeezing headaches unresponsive to any analgesic. The only relief was to suck oxygen from aerosol canisters you could buy for Y 30. That's how I survived climbing the steep steps and breathing the thick incense of the Potala Palace. Tess was having palpitations and didn't want to test the limits of her cardiac pacemaker so she stayed in her room. Didi tried to get out but couldn't make the palace steps so she decided to go back and take refuge in the bus, because it was also raining and the wind was whipping. Myrna was coming down with the flu when we left Xian, so she also had fever and chills on top of altitude sickness. She only saw her bed and the bowl of the toilet during the 2 days we spent in Tibet. She didn't eat for 2 days and was glad to lose weight, her only consolation. She said she would return to see the sights she missed only if she got crazy enough. She got worried so she agreed to see the hotel doctor who made a room call, gave her a physical, confirmed she had the flu and altitude sickness, then gave her a shot and a supply of medicine, all for Y 100, the equivalent of $12.31. Managed health care in the United States is ripping us off. When we left Tibet we were hungry. Yak cuisine I believe is only cherished by yaks, and we had had enough Chinese food for a week, for breakfast, lunch and dinner, so we definitely needed a break. McDonald's was restorative.
We had started in style. In Vancouver, our gateway to Beijing, we hired a white chauffeured limousine to pick us up from the airport and take us to the historic 5-star Fairmont Hotel, across from Robson Street and the fashionable downtown scene. The weekend stay in Vancouver was the warm-up act, as our trans-Pacific crossing was not until until Monday.
We couldn't wait to get to Beijing. But our excitement was quickly contained when Tess's luggage didn't show up. We saved the day by having a good excuse to shop. However, Air China found the bag in Vancouver and brought it over the next day. Didi wasn't as lucky with her new camera. She had narrowly escaped disaster in Vancouver during security inspection. She was held up a long time when she couldn't operate the brand new camera because she had forgotten about batteries. She therefore had to step out of the security area and arrange for it to be put in checked baggage. It arrived with us only to get lost later in her hotel room.
Beijing was venerable, ancient and impressive. It is hosting the 2008 Summer Olympics and you won't miss to note that with street hawkers pushing Olympic-logoed hats and stuff. It is over 2000 years old, like most of the other places we visited. It's good to visit these ancient places. After all we were taking this trip on our golden 60th birthdays, so in comparison, we are juveniles. You think everything in Texas is big? Well, you obviously haven't been to Beijing. Tiananmen Square holds 1million people. I can't even imagine that. It requires aerobic fitness and good running shoes to traverse. The Forbidden City is forbiddingly huge as well, with one courtyard after another and another. Just to get from room to room is like walking to the next block. Its floors are layered under with 6 meters of stone, to prevent enemies from tunneling in. It was barren. It had no trees, for similar enemy-deterrent reasons. Forbidding indeed! I lost the group in the Temple of Heaven and managed to find myself in the surrounding gardens amidst 600- year-old cypress trees. I thought it was there where the intention of the Temple was felt most and was meant for me to experience. It was like the uplifting one feels in the right moments and solemn state of the spirit in cathedrals. I was thinking that if I never find the group I'd just take a taxi to the hotel. But Peter, our tour manager found me. You'd think it would be smooth sailing from here on, but no!
We checked in for a very early flight to Xian still groggy from lack of sleep because we had played mahjongg until 2 AM and barely had enough time to repack and make it to the airport. Well, our flight was delayed for 4 hours, we were told to our chagrin. But China Southern was nice. They booked all the passengers at a nearby hotel, gave us full breakfast, and told us to rest and take a nap and they'll ring us when our flight was ready. Wow, do you think Delta would do that? Playing mahjongg in hotels is easy in China. Everybody does it in their rooms and every hotel is set up with rental tables and mahjongg sets to hire by the hour. I bought an exquisite hand-carved black agate mahjongg set and we used it to play that 2nd night in Beijing, only to discover that the set was the mainland version, not the familiar Hong Kong set we are used to. Mainland mahjongg has 8 fewer flowers. I had to return the set, regrettably.
Xian was lovely. Our hotel faced the city square and every morning at first light, we saw everyone come out to do Tai Chi. There are no health clubs, so the citizens use public spaces for these activities and for social gatherings. There was a group of women who did their exercises with colorful fans and another group with a leader who called the graceful sustained movements to hypnotic music. With the morning light coming in at an angle against the ancient city walls and reflecting over the Drum and Bell Towers, the whole scene was mesmerizing, surreal. In neighborhood alleys, people played chess and mahjongg, did each other's hair, cleaned the baby or brushed their teeth, socializing simultaneously. And of course the terra cotta warriors were just mind-boggling. The imagination of this particular Qin Dynasty emperor was truly beyond ordinary. The Big Wild Goose Pagoda paled in comparison. The disaster in Xian was that we didn't have enough time to do shopping. Our local guide, Margaret was very proud of her city and was determined to give us and show us the experience she thought we required to appreciate her city. She was a hard taskmaster and exhorted us against shopping for bargains and fakes, and warned us not to fall for ruses and manipulations by these new entrepreneurs. In the end Margaret was right and we enjoyed her city the most, thanks to her.
As soon as we descended from Lhasa to Chengdu, we felt much better. The headaches just disappeared. After McDonald's we're off to Chongqin where would board the boat that would take us on a 3-day Yangtze River cruise. The highlight would be passing through the Three Gorges, which next year will disappear in the biggest dam project in the world. When the dam is operational, the water will rise to 145 meters and flood the ancient towns and cultural relics along the river. When May, our local guide announced that we were going on a 4-hour bus ride to Chongqin and that we should all head for the bus station, we all cracked up. Right away I yelled to Myrna, "Hey, use devastation in a sentence". And on cue Myrna replied, " To go to Chongqin, pirst we must go to de- bas- tey-shon". We doubled over laughing and I'm sure the other folks on the tour group thought we had all gone mad. We went on and on with " Hey, use tenacious in a sentence", and so forth, until we exhausted our repertoire.
A cruise on the Yangtze is not anything like going on a Disney Big Red Boat. There is absolutely nothing to do but sit and watch the scenery. We went on off-shore excursions to ancient temples built on the sides of the mountain plunging into the river. We took a ski lift to the Ghost City (torture chambers and ugly creatures where sinners would go and attempt to be purified for reincarnation). We paddled upstream in tributaries to be in the midst of pristine blue-green crystal waters and feel enveloped by soaring mountain walls on each side. But it didn't take long to discover the art of doing nothing. It was actually peaceful. In the evenings it was mahjongg time, until Didi and Myrna got on each other's nerves and began wagging fingers in each other's faces and got all worked up over nothing. We quit mahjongg right then and there and didn't touch it again. But we love each other, so the next day all was forgiven and we prepared for the eagerly- awaited sojourn to Shanghai. Shucks, I wasn't able to recover my mahjongg losses totaling close to 60 US dollars.
Shanghai is Chicago along the "Bund," New York along the East Bank, and China in the Old Town. It has the pulse of the West, with frenetic shopping on Nanjing Road and gleaming breathtaking skyscrapers in the new city that rose from the East Bank marshes only in the last 10 years. Its sweeping highway exchanges puts Atlanta’s Spaghetti Junction to shame, and the tallest communication tower in the world gives its skyline a futuristic ambience. We found a bottle of French Bordeaux and drank to my 60th birthday. It was Sunday, the 25th of August. Shanghai. Just the name conjures mystery, intrigue and excitement.
The next day we were back to reality. We were going home and suddenly we couldn't wait to get going. The Pacific crossing was sooo long and we needed to stay overnight in Vancouver to get a flight home to Atlanta very early the next day. But that was OK for as soon as we got into Vancouver's spanking new international concourse we were grateful for the clean and deodorized restroom facilities with soap and paper supplies and flushing seat toilets. We never got used to the crouching position and the heavy stink of open floor urinals without flushing water and toilet paper in China. Flushing seat toilets are the hallmark of advanced civilization, don't anybody dispute that! We couldn't stomach another Chinese meal, so we looked for Goldilocks and ordered kare-kare, binagoongan, dinuguan, and sago drink. All was well, we would be home soon. Or so we thought. But we couldn't believe what happened next. Our connecting flight from Minneapolis had been canceled. Northwest was going to put us on their last flight out of there 3 hours later. Unacceptable. Our graciousness and equanimity had been spent in China. We demanded to be booked on another airline at their expense, and we were serious. We landed at Hartsfield on Delta only 40 minutes later than our original scheduled arrival with all our luggage and pasalubong. At last we were home!