Our Anhui Hotel

The Zipline

Bamboo Forest pictures

Photos HongCun

Tuesday June 19th

NOTE:  THE INTERNET IS SKETCHY THIS MORNING--SO I CAN'T POST PICTURES.  I WILL TRY LATER--

This morning is the beginning of an exciting day, our first real day of touring! We woke and went to breakfast, got re-packed, got in our Van with a driver about 8:30 and drove 4 hours into Anhui Provice to the the town of Tong Kou for lunch. After lunch, we drove a short distance to Hong Cun.

Hong Cun

HongCun is a Unesco World Heritage site and it is where some scenes from Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon were filmed. We had to pay admission to walk around there, Min was half price, Laina was full price, because of height. We walked around this ancient town and looked at the old buildings and small streets, the houses are all whitewashed with black details-roofs, door lintels, and window ledges. Wooden lattice work in the windows and doors are also typical of the style of the town and were very intricate. Many art students sitting along canals and alley ways sketching or painting the scenery. It is one of the places which one should go to paint beautiful scenery, and the girls enjoyed watching the students sketch. There were not many (I only saw one other than us) non-Asian tourists. We walked around the town for about 2 hours and then we decided to go have a hike around a bamboo forest.

Bamboo Forest

This Bamboo Forest is where scenes from Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon were filmed. It's interesting, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, was not a commercial success here in China, in fact most people didn't like it, but they are milking it for all it's worth for the "Places where scenes were filmed" angle. At the bamboo forest we saw HUGE stands of Bamboo, each trunk was about 10 inches in diameter and then would shoot off into the sky until the top became very thin and flexible and the leaves would bend the tops of the bamboo. The forest of feathery looking bamboo is a lovely place to spend a warm day, it's relatively cool, and shady and the plants are graceful and beautiful to look at. We had to hike by stairs to the top of the hill, and on the way we saw butterflies, different insects (beetles, green flies, a cenipede and Mosquitoes!). It was quiet with no other tourists at the time we were hiking. After about 45 minutes of hiking, we came to...The Zipline!!!

Zipline

This zipline was a thrown together operation, a seat made of cloth webbing and hung on some cables. It didn't look particularly weak or shoddy, but a bit thrown together. Jorg was nervous to go, so I agreed to go first. The ride down was quick, but not overly fast. Next was the girls' turn. Neither of them wanted to go, so Jorg and the operator struck a deal with them, they would ride together. Perfect! I could hear Laina crying at the top, but they arrived with smiles on their faces. Jorg was next and we were all safe on the other side of the valley. We began our walk down to the entrance again.

Hotel

Our hotel for the night is FANTASTIC!! It's a 300 year old traditional Anhui style residence that has been functioning like a hotel for 3 years. The who structure is wood, with lattice windows and stone courtyards in the middle. It really looks like something from the movies, but in reality, the movies look something like this. We have a common area, a sleeping room and a toilet/shower just for us. There are not other guests in the hotel. Apparently, a rich businessman from Shehzhen has bought one wing of the hotel and wants that wing at his beck and call at all times, so there are times when the place is quite empty, like today. We walked around the village, which is attached to a small ancient town a bit in the valley which we didn't walk to. The hotel fixed us dinner in the courtyard and we had delicious and spicy vegetable dishes and our peaches for dessert.

The Pig Story

As we were walking around the village waiting for dinner, we passed a little house type hut. Jorg and I hear a pig grunting in the house and decided to play a little joke on the girls. We told them they should go into the hut and look and see what was inside. We told them it was fine, and they wouldn't get in trouble. Cautiously, they approached the hut and stepped inside. It was dark and their eyes hadn't adjusted to the darkness and right on cue, the pig grunted. The girls screamed and ran outside, Laina burst into tears and started berating me for being horrible and mean. Min thought it was funny and I walked into the hut with them to take a good look at the pig, who was disappointed that we were not bringing him anything to eat!

Monday in Nanjing

This Monday, after breakfast, we were met by an assistant of Eliza named Yu-yu.  Yu-yu was given the task to entertain me and the girls for the day.  And she did a very good job!  The first part of the day we went to Purple mountain.  Our morning was spent touring the Mausoleum of Dr. Sun Yat Sen (who expelled the Japanese from China) and we also toured the Ming Tombs-of Emperor Xuang De who ruled the Nanjing area about 100 years before Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492.  We took a little electric car ride around the area since we didn't have enough time to walk the whole thing, and in general we had a very nice tour.  I forgot an SD card for my camera and so I have no pictures to post of the morning.

Lunch time we met Jorg, Sean and Eliza for lunch and then after that Yu-yu took us to the train station to buy our high speed train tickets to Beijing.  We waited in the car, and the girls and I sang songs to entertain ourselves.  We had a little ball, and would sing songs (row your boat, Star Spangled Banner, BINGO, I've been working on the Railroad) and when the song was over, who ever was holding the ball would get to choose the next song to sing.  I think our driver thought we were crazy, but that's OK.  We had fun.

After the tickets were purchased, we zoomed to the Science and Technology museum, which was conveniently closed on a Monday.  No matter, we went to an amusement park, a REAL, CHINESE, super dodgy, rusted out amusement park!!!  We went on the carousel, the dragon coaster, the bumper cars and some sort of weird octopus ride.  It was a total hit with the girls.  Yu-yu didn't think it was so great, and prefers to keep her feet on solid ground.

After the amusement park, Yu-yu dropped us off at our Hotel and I took the girls swimming.  I had to purchase swim caps for us, which is fine, and we went swimming for about an hour and a half.  We met a couple of kids who were also staying at the hotel, and they were from Hawaii.  They all had a good time splashing around.  Sorry, no pictures of swimming--didn't bring the camera for it.

We closed the day by going out to dinner again with Eliza and Sean and Eliza's parents.  Of note at the meal what the very long fish, about 20 inches long, served on a long platter.

The girls were absolutely dead tired and fell asleep as soon as we got back to the room.  End of Monday!!

Tuesday = drive to XiDi and Hong Cun and walk through ancient cities!  Wednesday we will climb Huang Shan.  We will head to Beijing on Friday!!

First Day in Nanjing

We have arrived in our very nice hotel and are starting our first full day in the city.  The girls and I are heading out on an adventure with a friend from Jorg's office.  I don't know what we'll be doing.

Yesterday, we arrived after our marathon flights, and were taken out to lunch with Eliza and Sean (Business associates of Jorg).  We had some wonderful food, and then they took us shopping for water and snacks and the girls were treated to a pair of sandals, with fancy rhinestones and plastic flowers--just what every kid needs.  Oh, and candy and cookies and juice.  Eliza also bought us some special fruit, called "Ya Mei" which I have never seen nor eaten before.  They are a kind of berry from a tree and the taste is similar to a strawberry and a grape.  Delicious!!  In the evening we went out for drinks with Julia and Helmut, two German friends who we have met in Nanjing.  They became our friends after we learned they had spent a year in Shiyan City two years after Jorg and I had been there.  We had a good time talking to them and their two girls.  I will write the story of how we got in contact with them later, it's a good story.  I told them about the death of Lee Henn a year ago and we reminisced about her for a while.  After drinks we walked back to our hotel and fell asleep at about 9:00--completely exhausted!!

On the Airplane

I am 7 1/2 hours into a 15 hour flight as I type this. The kids have slept most of the time up until now, and since their internal time clocks tell them it's 6:45 in the morning, they have woken and are now becoming restless and want to play with their things, which is fine...it's why we brought them. We had a little dinner about an hour into the flight, and now we're over Japan I think...or Russia...it's hard to tell from the on-flight map.

A list of things:

1. I can feel my calves and ankles swelling to elephantine proportions.

2. Laina can sleep in any position.

3. I will never get used to turbulence.

4. Chinese romantic comedies require very little brain power and an extremely large amount of tolerance for squeaky, little, pretty, girls who aren't very smart.

5. Laina just spilled a cup of sprite on Min. This will not happen again...because Laina will now only get water.

6. I like Traditional Chinese music. I also enjoy watching Beijing Opera. I'm listening to some traditional music on the flight entertainment system. It's folk tunes set to a modern rhythm and using some synth sounds mixed in.

7. We are all packed in carry on sized luggage.

8. I forget how big I become in China. Not just "fat" big, but "tall" big. I can stand in the crowd and easily look over everyone's heads. I do get proportionally fatter, too. Mostly because I'm fatter.

9. Min has developed a little runny nose and I hope it doesn't develop into a full blown cold. These airplanes are flying germ missiles and hopefully her immune system will keep the wee beasties at bay. (I wonder if by typing "Flying germ missiles" and then posting it online if it will trigger something with the transportation authority. We will see.)

10. The girls have settled after a couple of laps around the plane and are quietly watching the movie or listening to music. Oh...now they're heading to the toilets together. Well...they will settle soon enough, or not...

Our first stop on our journey is the city of Nanjing. Things which are famous in this city-it is the site of the Nanjing Massacre. This incident happened in the 1940's I think. I don't have any resources to fact check, so I will just say it was the 40's. If it sounds interesting you can look it up on Wikipedia. I haven't been to the massacre site since 1998, and I hear they have updated it, excavated more of the mass graves and have displayed more artifacts. On this particular trip, we aren't going to go there. It's a little too intense for the kids, so we will give it a skip. Another famous site here is the mausoleum of Sun Yat Sen. He was a general in the army and helped to throw the Japanese out of China in the 40's. They have a great big temple like mausoleum that we may go to. Oh, and there's Purple Mountain, a park like place with areas to walk around, have a picnic and run around. On the first day here, I have the girls alone, since Jorg is having business meetings. I'm not sure what the girls and I will do. We may walk around and look at shops, we may take the metro somewhere, we may go to the mausoleum...I'm not sure.

Well, I am sleepy again, so I will turn off the lappy and get out my ipod and listen to someone talking me to sleep. Zzzzzz....

Some Photos

At The Airport.

Well, we are currently 2 hours past bedtime and the girls are getting the tired sleepy crazies.  Currently, they are going to go look around the shops and Laina is bugging Jorg to "buy us something".  Who knows what they will end up with.  Check in procedures went well and we didn't have to get patted down OR x-rayed.  When we get on the flight, we will be on the flight for 15 hours and then another 2 before we arrive in our first destination-Nanjing.  I am looking forward to a bit of a rest and perhaps a little sleep.  I hope the flight goes faster than the clock.