Tianjin, China (Beijing) Day 2 — 2024
We woke up early in our hotel room on March 12. Already in Beijing, at least there would be no long bus ride to get there, but we were scheduled to check out and leave at 7:30 for the short ride to Tiananmen Square to try to beat most of the crowds that visit there every day. And before that was a vast buffet breakfast with many Chinese and Western foods, far more than anyone could even sample before a long day of walking. I was more than satisfied with a couple of croissants. We checked out of our hotel, quite beautiful inside with many flowers, and boarded the bus.
We walked from our bus to Tiananmen Square, entering from a bit to the side of the Quinmen, the huge gate at the front of the square. It is a beautiful building, which we saw from a distance all lit up the previous night, but by the time our guide pointed it out to us today the sun was directly behind it so our picture is pretty woeful. Far away on the opposite edge of the vast square we had our first view of the Tiananmen (Gate Of Heavenly Peace), with a painting of Mao Zedong above the entrance in the wall below. Tiananmen Square was first built in 1651 and greatly enlarged in the 1950’s. It measures some 835 yards long by 310 yards wide (think 8 football fields long by 3 wide) and will accommodate a crowd up to about 600,000 (thankfully not that many the day we visited).
Most people reading this will probably associate this square with the violent suppression of student democracy protests in 1989, in which it is estimated that hundreds (some say thousands) were killed. In China no one speaks of this in public and most Chinese are not even aware that it happened. It is our understanding that the only public entrance to the Forbidden City requires walking across this huge square to the entrance below the painting of Chairman Mao. So that is what we did. Walking along we passed the Monument to the People’s Heroes, a 125 foot tall obelisk completed in 1958 and saw the National Museum of China behind it on the eastern side of the square. The museum, first opened in 1959, is the largest single museum building in the world. It has a vast and varied collection and it looks like one easily could spend a day or two just exploring this museum. We did not have that kind of time, so walked on by. In the center of the square just south of the Monument is Chairman Mao Memorial Hall, the mausoleum that is his final resting place. It was completed on May 24, 1977, about 8 months after Mao’s death.
Along the western edge of the square is the Great Hall of the People, meeting place of the National People’s Congress and the National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, along with other official and ceremonial functions. Its construction was completed on September 9, 1959. A large building with a long and low profile, it is 1,168 feet long and 677 feet wide.
There would be more than enough time to spend in the square before we would be admitted to the Forbidden City and this apparently is a traditional place for visitors to take pictures. Well, we were visitors so here are some pictures of us and our companions with the Tiananmen as the background.
The Tiananmen itself (“Tiananmen Gate” is redundant, since “men” apparently means gate) is a widely recognized symbol of modern China. First built in 1420, this “Gate of Heavenly Peace” has been damaged or destroyed and rebuilt several times, most recently in 1970. It is 217 feet long, 121 feet wide and 105 feet tall. Across the front are two large inscriptions in Chinese: the left one means “Long Live The People’s Republic of China,” and on the right “Long Live the Great Solidarity of the World’s Peoples.” In front, between the building and the street, is part of the old Imperial moat that still surrounds the Forbidden City with carved marble bridges leading over it to the entrances. Decorative fountains shoot up from the moat on each side of the building. Over the main entry is a huge painting of Mao Zedong, which weighs 1.5 metric tons.
Two marble lions stand guard near the front of the building and there are two tall marble columns called “huabiao” standing just beyond each end of the building. With marble wing-like appendages near the top they look a lot like Alaskan totem poles. These date to the 15th century.
Finally it was our turn to proceed through the central front gate into a large courtyard leading to the Meridian gate, which is the actual entrance into the Forbidden City. This side of the Tiananmen is called the Upright Gate. There was quite a long wait here (just like Disney World, where you wait in line and when you finally enter you find yourself in another long line).
We spent quite a bit of time in this courtyard before being permitted to move on to the next one. The courtyard is surrounded by buildings in traditional Chinese style, much red, green and yellow. Yellow roofs like those seen on some of these buildings were permitted only for the Emperor’s buildings. Notable here and on other buildings are the decorations on the ends of the roof eaves, made up of a row of golden animals, including dragons, phoenixes and lions. They are quite beautiful and the number of animals indicates the importance of the building, from just a couple to as many as nine. The long rows of buildings along the sides of the square used to be administrative offices. Young men in uniform were in this courtyard to keep order, and as the courtyard got more crowded we were all required to stand in parallel lines, with each set of visitors in a different line headed by its guide carrying a numbered white sign.
We have seen before in Japan and China that some young people like to dress up in rented period costumes when visiting historical venues. While we waited in line there was a group near us dressed in what we understand were Ming period costumes. Very colorful, and they happily posed for pictures. There was also a man with a baby in a beautifully embroidered backpack.
Of course, what we were all waiting for was our turn to go through the Meridian Gate. Unlike all the other gates in the Forbidden City, the Meridian has large side walls stretching forward along the sides of the courtyard like the arms of the Sphinx, each with a building on top. The Meridian Gate is the actual entrance to the Forbidden City proper.
We finally walked through the Meridian Gate. There was a security check inside the gate where we had to show our passports and (if I remember correctly) walk through a metal detector. A bit irritating because there was a line, but not a big deal. Except for our travel agency’s host Susie. She was taken aside as the rest of us went on through. She was detained for about half an hour before being allowed to rejoin us, causing some concern because no one told us why. It turned out that she was carrying all our tickets for the Forbidden City and whoever had filled out a form to accompany them had miscopied one of the digits in her passport number so that they didn’t match. One of our guide’s assistants made the trip back to their office to obtain a corrected form, stepping up like a pro to fix the situation. We were all glad to see Susie finally return. Enough excitement for one day!
We emerged from the Meridian gate into another courtyard where we could see the Gate of Supreme Harmony on the opposite side. Through the middle of this courtyard runs a man made stream called the Inner River of the Golden Water, with five marble bridges over it. Green sculpted lions (perhaps old tarnished bronze) stood guard in front of it.
Walking through this gate (after Susie finally returned) we came out into a much larger courtyard leading to the Hall of Supreme Harmony, the largest building in the Forbidden City. This large building sits atop three levels of marble. The buildings in the Forbidden City are all made of wood, the largest collection of wooden buildings in the world. And they were constructed without nails, which were viewed as violent and non-harmonious at the time. Instead they are held together entirely by mortise and tenon joints. Large bronze cauldrons were distributed throughout the complex, which were once kept filled with water as a precaution against fires (always a danger with wooden buildings).
We climbed up the steps to the large stone veranda in front of the building. Bronze sculptures of animals and a large incense burner were out on the patio and inside the central entrance was the Emperor’s throne room where his Dragon Throne still sits. Unfortunately entrance to the building was not allowed and there was a big crowd of people behind a fence in front of this room angling for position to take pictures, even though the room was on a higher level. The room inside was dark and outside the sun was very bright, so we really couldn’t see anything inside the opening from where we stood behind the crowd other than some windows that were (un)helpfully backlighting the dark throne. But standing behind the crowd we raised our cameras over our heads and took some pictures blind in the hope that we could coax something out of them on the computer, because you never know. The images are there in the pictures below, but they look like they were retrieved from film that has been sitting in water a long time. Still, the throne (which actually is golden in color) must have been pretty impressive to court visitors.
The carved marble staircases and veranda fencing were quite beautiful in themselves, with dragon heads lining the bottom at floor level serving as rainwater runoff spouts. It was quite a view from the veranda down the steps and across the courtyard to the Gate of Supreme Harmony through which we had entered. The central carriageway is covered with intricately carved marble reliefs. Back in the day, no one but the Emperor was permitted to use it.
Behind the big hall is the much smaller square shaped Hall of Central Harmony. We walked through a small gate to the side of the Hall of Supreme Harmony to reach it. Walking through another gate we looked up and saw its elaborate ceiling, made of wood with mortise and tenon joints. And nearby were several side buildings with gracefully interacting eaves. Behind the Hall of Central Harmony is the larger rectangular Hall of Preserving Harmony.
We walked further back, along a corridor between the walls enclosing the inner court on one side and the western palaces on the other. We passed gates in the wall that led to the western palaces, but we didn’t have time to go in. Several walls in this area sported glazed decorations that were quite nice. We also had a chance to rest and listen to our guide explain what we were seeing.
The last area inside the Forbidden City is the Imperial gardens. It has several pavilions, rock gardens and imposing trees, some we were told are well over a century old. Living quarters for the Emperor’s concubines and offspring were also located in this area. Many of the garden paths had stone mosaic designs.
We left the Forbidden City through the Gate of Divine Might opening on a view of Jingshan Park across the street. What you see is an artificial hill (considered the highest point in Beijing) built in 1751 from soil excavated when digging the moats and canals in the Forbidden City. It was originally a private domain for the imperial family but was opened to the public in 1928. At the top of the hill, above the entry gate across the street from us, is the Wanchun Pavilion which sits on the central of five summits on the hill. To its left on another summit is Guanmiao Pavilion, which we were able to see over the roofs of the last part of the Forbidden City. From the Wanchun Pavilion on a clear day one has a panoramic view over the rooftops of the entire Forbidden City, but we didn’t have time to climb the hill to see that.
So that seemed like a pretty full day, right? It did to us. But no! There was more to come. We boarded the bus to drive to the nearby neighborhood where we would board bicycle rickshaws (pedicabs) for a driving tour of Beijing’s hutong neighborhoods. Hutongs are old Beijing neighborhoods, some up to 800 years old, populated by connected one story houses, each with a courtyard in the center. Most are built of gray brick and many of those left are hundreds of years old and lack plumbing and individual bathrooms. A courtyard house is called a Siheyuan, and a street or neighborhood of connected Siheyuan is called a Hutong. The Forbidden City was, in imperial times, surrounded by hutongs, with wealthier people living in more elaborate houses closer to the Forbidden City and less important and wealthy people living in more modest houses further out. In the mid 20th century there were thousands of hutongs in the area of Beijing surrounding the Forbidden City, but beginning in the 1990’s a majority of them have been destroyed to make way for high rise apartments and office buildings. Today there is a movement, supported by the government according to our guide, to preserve those that are left as a cultural treasure, although she also told us that many current residents are unhappy about restrictions on selling their property to developers for what can be a huge profit. We were very happy that they were still there when we visited.
We saw several two story buildings lining the roads, mostly stores it seemed. We have read that the old Siheyuan are almost all single story buildings and the two story emulations have been built in recent years, many for commercial uses.
We can’t tell you which hutongs we visited but most of them were lined with what seemed like continuous gray walls with periodic openings or doors, mostly red. We understand that these are very tight communities (after all, most people living in them meet at the public bathrooms), with much visiting, conversation and game playing. Some are very narrow and some very wide . . . from a couple of feet to perhaps 100 feet in width.
Rather than tear them down, the government has encouraged the conversion of some buildings in this area into restaurants, bars and stores. Not all of these are old single story hutong houses, but they are still part of the neighborhood.
Our ride took us along Shichahai Lake. In the 13th and 14th centuries this was the northern terminus of the Grand Canal (discussed in our visit to Suzhou: https://baderjournal.com/2024/08/26/shanghai-china-day-2-suzhou-2024/) and was then a bustling commercial area. After the canal was extended to other destinations it became a noted scenic area, the largest body of water in Beijing and lined with green trees. We noticed that it is also lined with stone walls that look very similar to the ones lining the Golden Water channel running through the Forbidden City and wonder if the two are connected. Today the area is becoming a mecca for popular bars and restaurants. On the day we visited the water was still and reflective.
Leaving the rickshaws we had to walk back to meet the bus. Among other things, we walked down Yandaixie Street (we think). Before World War II this street was known for antiques, then in the 1950’s much of it was converted to residences. Beginning in 2007 it has been redeveloped to revive its historical appearance. This is a fairly narrow stone paved pedestrian street and many clothing, craft, pottery and souvenir stores have relocated here, along with various bars and restaurants. As we walked down the street toward a large arch at the end, festive red lanterns were strung over our heads. At one point we walked past a store advertising antiques and when one person asked about it our guide quipped “Yes, we have several antiques factories in Beijing.”
After all that we finally stopped for lunch in a restaurant serving good Chinese food. It was a bit of a rush, though, because our group was being divided here with some folks heading to the airport to begin a longer trip for several more days in China while the rest of us headed back to the port. On the way out of town we passed a guard tower on top of what we were told is a remnant of the ancient Beijing city walls. It was another very long drive and we were glad to get back on board the ship after such a full day. So ends our first visit to mainland China, where we felt we saw quite a lot but there is still much more to see if we ever get the chance.
Tianjin, China (Beijing) Day 1 — 2024
On March 11 we berthed in the port of Tianjin, the closest port to Beijing, for an overnight stay. When we saw the itinerary we thought Tianjin was just the port for Beijing but it turns out to be a city of almost 14 million people. HAL had excursions to see Tianjin, which has a long and eventful history and many interesting things to see, but this was our first trip to this part of China so there was no way we were going to pass up an opportunity to visit Beijing. We have read that about 95% of cruise ship passengers stopping here make the same choice we did.
However, it is about a 3 hour bus drive from Tianjin to Beijing in normal traffic and doing that trip twice in one day (there and back) would not only be exhausting, it would leave little time to do anything else in Beijing. So we were very happy when our travel agency posted an overnight trip to Beijing, which would cut the driving time in half, spreading those 6 bus hours over two days. So that is what we did here.
Beijing, of course, is the capital and second largest city in China, with some 21 million people. It has been the capital for some 600 years now. Perhaps the most famous thing to see in this part of the world is the Great Wall of China (which, contrary to myth, cannot be seen from the moon) and that was our destination for this first day.
We set out around 9:00 AM (after some people had delays making it through customs). In the cruise terminal we had an entertaining welcoming committee as we hurried the long distance to our bus.
Beijing has a reputation for very polluted air, but the day we were there pollution was visible in the air near Tianjin, but the closer we got to Beijing the more it dissipated. In all, we had a beautiful day and even the temperature was nicer than expected. It seems the Chinese have been addressing their housing shortage by building sets of high rise apartment buildings in the countryside rather than in the cities. We saw this in the Shanghai area as well. It looks a little odd when passing by to see these large apartment complexes unconnected to a city, but I guess you do what you have to do to address an important problem like that. We also passed what appeared to be several nuclear power plants in the countryside.
We made two stops on our way to the Great Wall, which is located on the other side of Beijing from the port. First, as if the drive from the port was not long enough already, we stopped at what appeared to be a security checkpoint, where everyone’s passport was inspected (again, since this had been done once at the port before we left). For some reason this took quite a while, maybe because other buses were ahead of us. We didn’t time it but would estimate that we sat there on the bus for about 45 minutes. Second, we stopped for lunch at a nice Chinese restaurant about 20 minutes from our destination. The restaurant and some neighboring buildings were in a traditional Chinese style of architecture, the food was quite good and there was a sculpture gallery selling jade items in all shapes and sizes, at substantial prices. Photography was not allowed in the gallery.
Since we are talking about a restaurant, this is probably a good place to mention one more thing about touring Asia . . . toilets, or rather the lack thereof. People in many parts of Asia, even in cities, squat over a hole in the ground for this purpose and have never seen a Western style toilet. If one has never used one, encountering a toilet must be bewildering. Here is a sign over a men’s room toilet in China which helpfully explains how it is used even for visitors who are illiterate. The picture is quite suggestive of the common response when no such instructions are available.
The Badaling section is the best restored and maintained portion of the Great Wall. Because of that, and because it is the closest to Beijing, it is often very crowded. In 2018, we have read, 10 million people visited this site and in 2019 a limit of 65,000 per day was instituted. We were extremely lucky in our visit, because not only did we have beautiful weather and clear air that allowed long distance viewing of other portions of the wall, but also (at least partially because we arrived in late afternoon) there were very few people other than our group in the area. A funicular here (this is the only section of the wall that has one) took us up the steep hill from the parking lot to just below the wall itself.
The Great Wall of China is more than 13,000 miles long. The first sections of the wall were built between the 8th and 5th centuries BCE, mostly of earth and stone. In the early 3d century BCE, however, the first emperor of a unified China had these walls destroyed because they were no longer at the border of his empire, and built new walls further north. Most of these ancient walls have eroded away long before now, with some of their materials carted away for use in other construction. In the 14th century CE the Ming dynasty began building a new wall along China’s northern border to defend against the Mongols. This wall was much stronger, built primarily of bricks and stone rather than packed earth. The Badaling section of the wall that we visited was built in 1504 and was the first section opened to the public in 1957. It is about 25 feet tall and 16 feet wide.
Note how few people are on the wall in these pictures; it almost seemed that the site had been reserved just for us! You can also see that the wall is crenelated on one side (which allows archers to fire through the openings without exposing themselves to enemy fire). Presumably the crenelated side faces away from China toward the enemy; the shadows show that this side faces west. This is very mountainous country and the wall undulates up and down with the hillsides. Among other things, this makes exploring the top of the wall challenging since it requires climbing some very steep inclines, steep enough to have steps in them. At the tops of the inclines are watchtowers and signal towers. . . tens of thousands of them across the entire distance of the wall.
We did walk up and go inside this watchtower. Not much inside it today, but the views from the windows were interesting.
As seen in some of the pictures above, other sections of the wall could be seen in the distance from the top of the wall where we were. We aren’t sure how far away they are but they could be seen clearly on the day we visited.
The sun was dropping the whole time we were there and by the time we had to leave the shadows stretched almost to the opposite wall.
As we left we noticed a platform near the wall up on the mountain that appeared to serve as a cell tower, with a jumble of antennae. As we drove back toward Beijing we saw a fiery sunset through a leafless woods, then some lighted Chinese style buildings along the streets leading to our dinner restaurant.
We had dinner in a Chinese restaurant where each large round table had a lazy susan in the center for sharing the many courses. The signature dish was Peking Duck (our guide explained that it is still called that even though the city is now Beijing). Many cooked ducks were hanging in the open kitchen and we watched the chef carving ducks not too far from our table. Yum.
After our sumptuous dinner we drove to our hotel, the Regent Beijing, a luxury hotel not far from the Forbidden City. Again we passed through streets with lighted buildings and some lighted trees. Notably in the first picture the building on the right is a back view of Mao Zedong’s mausoleum and next to it is Qian Men gate, the front entrance to Tiananmen Square. We haven’t identified the third building whose lighted roof is further to the left, but it might be the archery tower associated with the Quian Men gate. The last picture in this group is a view through our hotel window of the lighted street below.
We had a very nice hotel room but we did not stay up late to enjoy it because in the morning after breakfast we were scheduled to leave at 7:30 AM. It would be a long and enriching day.
Dalian, China 2024
We spent March 10 in Dalian, the largest passenger port in China, located on the shore of the Yellow Sea at the southern end of the Liaodong Peninsula. With a population between 7 and 8 million people, this is another to add to the long list of huge cities we have visited we didn’t know about until they appeared on our itinerary. While this area was home to fishing villages for centuries, the city was not founded until the Russians took control in 1895 and began to build a modern naval port to be the home of its Pacific fleet because this was the northernmost ice free coastal site in the western Pacific. The Russians built a town they called Dalniy (“far away”) and modernized the nearby Port Arthur for its Asian fleet.
Port Arthur (named for a 19th century British naval officer, perhaps during the short British occupation in 1858 during the 2d Opium War) was the focus of the Russo-Japanese war that ended in 1905 after the Japanese defeated the Russian navy here. This was a shock, because Russia was a European major power and Japan had only begun modernizing 50 years before. Japan was ceded control of the peninsula in the Treaty of Portsmouth. After the end of World War II China regained sovereignty over the area, although the Soviet military did not leave until 1955. In 1950 Lushun (formerly Port Arthur) was merged with Dalian to form a city called Luda, whose name reverted to Dalian in 1981. So, although we had not heard of Dalian before this trip, we had known about Port Arthur, which is now a district of Dalian.
There was a shuttle available to downtown Dalian (a long walk away), but as mentioned in the previous post of our first day in Shanghai – https://baderjournal.com/2024/08/16/shanghai-china-day-1-2024/ – because we had not gotten Chinese visas we could only leave the ship on a HAL sponsored excursion (or one operated by someone approved for the purpose by the Chinese government). But HAL (Holland America) was only offering 3 excursions, all less than 4 hours long, so there was not much to choose from. We surely wanted to see what we could of the city rather than spend the day on the ship, so we signed up for the longest of HAL’s excursions as soon as the visa-free program was announced (we think we were the last to get places on this tour). So off we went in the morning after breakfast, driving through a city that turned out to be full of tall skyscrapers and open city parks.
Dalian was originally built by the Russians beginning in 1895 and named Dalniy, replacing a small town called Qingniwa. Russian Culture Street, which we visited first, is the oldest street in town. Several of the buildings erected by the Russians were still there in 1999 when Bo Xilai, the mayor of Dalian, began the project to restore this district. Russian architects were employed to renovate eight old Russian buildings, add so-called Russian facades to six other buildings and build six new buildings in a Russian style. For the most part we don’t know which buildings are old and which are new, but none of them look Chinese (except for the signs outside them in Chinese). The area is somewhat atmospheric, but also highly commercial with many vendors selling tourist items you might expect to see in Eastern Europe rather than in China. We reached Russian Street through a side entrance, walking under a sign that is apparently lighted at night.
We saw some buildings seemingly dressed up for an occasion, such as with flower arrangements, but we don’t know what the occasion might have been. Maybe it was for our ship’s visit to Dalian . . . we were told we were the first cruise ship to stop here since the pandemic. Or maybe they keep it that way all the time to help attract tourists.
It was Sunday morning and bright and sunny (but rather cold) so as time went on more and more people were out and about. We stopped to watch a mother trying to teach her son (presumably) how to fly a kite.
We didn’t get a lot of guidance from our very young guides about where to see original buildings or what their identity was. But we did walk past a Russian Orthodox church we think was old and a large curving building that might once have been a hotel.
We spotted the main entrance to the Russian street and walked over to take a look. The large arched sign was over a wide avenue leading straight to the original Russian city hall. There was a big crowd there (and we didn’t know what that building was at the time) so we didn’t get close to it. If we had, we would have seen that it is much bigger than this picture seems, stretching out to the right and left.
Finally, a few more random pictures of unidentified buildings, one of which had a large sculpture of a Russian nesting doll in front (along with a small elephant?). A lot of the trees in this area were decorated with what looked like balloons in red and yellow, all in all quite festive looking.
As we drove through town to our next destination we noticed that the whole town seemed brightly decorated with red lanterns and balls (balloons?). Among other things, we passed what we think is Olympic square, built in 1998 in anticipation of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Xinghai Square in Dalian is the largest city square in the world with a total area of 270 acres, all of it reclaimed land. Its name means “the Sea of Stars.” We aren’t sure what the definition of “city square” is, but Central Park in New York is three times as big. Xinghai Square was built to commemorate the return of Hong Kong to China and opened in 1997. At the edge of the water is the Centennial City Sculpture, a huge stone sculpture of a book lying open on the ground, with its ends curling upward. It provides a large space for people to walk on and take in the view of the Xinghai Bay Bridge across the water.
Leading up to the Centennial City Sculpture from the square’s interior is the long and low copper Sculpture of 1000 Footprints. It was completed in 1999, marking the centenary of the city’s founding. The footprints were made by Dalian citizens, starting with people born in 1899 and progressing toward the water with footprints of people born in 1999 at the end. Also at the end is a sculpture of two children who appear to be playing in the surf. When we were there it was surrounded by what looked from a distance like a bed of red flowers, but on closer inspection it appears to be some kind of carpet (look closely in the pictures and you can see some wrinkles).
The square has a very large lawn area and is landscaped in bushes which, at least when we were there, were red. The red bushes really stood out against the yellow grass. Kite flying seems to be popular in Dalian; we saw a number of people flying kites, many quite high in the air.
On one side of the square is the Dalian Shell Museum, opened in 2015. The building is shaped like a clam shell, slightly opened where the windows are placed. Next to it is the colorful Xinghai Bay Amusement Park.
Most of the periphery of the park on the land sides was surrounded by tall buildings, reminding us of the view on the edges of Central Park in New York. In the business center area north of the park many of the buildings were glass and steel, but on other sides were a lot that looked like an older style made of concrete. Several of these rows of buildings appear in the pictures above. Most notable to us was a building that looked like an old European castle on a hill, appropriately called the Castle Hotel. Despite its appearance this hotel is only 10 years old.
Finally (of the things we saw in the square), there are thirty groups of white steel mesh sculptures surrounding the square. Constructed for the 2008 Olympics, they depict athletes in action in a variety of sports. We only saw a few, but they were striking. Lighted at night they are probably even more striking. We also happened upon a pair of equestrian sculptures, but they weren’t of the mesh variety.
As we drove away from the square we passed a river or canal lined with tall buildings and an interesting green and white skyscraper.
Dalian’s first municipal tram line opened in 1909 while it was under Japanese control. By the end of World War II eleven tram lines were in operation. During urban renewal in the 1970’s most of the tram lines were removed and today there are only two. A ride on the tram was the last event on our excursion.
Reading the excursion description we (or at least Rick) had envisioned riding on an overpass or along the side of a hill with a panorama of the city out the window. It didn’t really say that explicitly, but that was what we were hoping for. Alas, no. This is an old fashioned urban tram, running (slowly) on tracks laid out on city streets, with little to see out the windows to the sides. And the ride only seemed to be about a mile in length. Our excursion was led by two very young guides, maybe 20 or so, who spoke excellent English but did not seem very experienced. They told us afterward that they had been very nervous about this excursion because we were the first cruise ship in town since the pandemic. If we were correct in our perception of their very young ages that means they probably had been too young to have done this before. The young woman guide had a microphone and did an explanation during our tram ride. She was quite articulate and had obviously prepared carefully for this. The guides were delightful, but the tram ride itself was disappointing.
Dalian is known for its large open city squares and we passed several on the bus on the way back to the port. One was a sculpture of what looked like a toad sitting on a pile of money and the other we got a photo of had a large green and purple sculpture in the middle with large Chinese characters in front. We have no idea what either of these signified.
Back at the port we went through customs and boarded the ship. There were a number of police officers milling about near the ship entrance but we don’t know whether this was usual or something special. We took some pictures from our veranda, of the dock off to our left and of the city in the distance on the right. A Chinese flag was flying on the dock as well. On a trip that includes places like Beijing and Kyoto it would be hard to justify calling Dalian one of the highlights, but it was a good bit more interesting than we had anticipated and we enjoyed our day here. At around 5:00 we sailed away to our next stop tomorrow.
Shanghai, China (Day 2–Suzhou) 2024
We woke up VERY early on the morning of March 8 to get ready for our excursion to Suzhou that was to leave at 6:30 AM. From the travel literature it appeared (at least to Rick) that Suzhou was a comparatively small garden city just outside Shanghai with a traditional ambience centered around a canal with arched bridges and much greenery. Much of that was true, but with a population of 5 or 6 million (one of the 60 largest in the world), Suzhou is anything but small.
Actually, Suzhou (formerly westernized as Soochow) has been a major commercial and manufacturing center for centuries. Founded in 514 BCE (under a different name, becoming Suzhou in the 6th century), by the 10th century it was the largest non-capital city in the world, eclipsed by Shanghai only in the early 20th century. Its size and importance began to decline relative to Shanghai in the second half of the 19th century, partly due to the devastation wrought by the Taiping rebellion in the 1860’s and the Boxer rebellion in the 1890’s, and partly due to the growing importance of Shanghai’s port in international sea trade and the deterioration of the Great Canal, of which Suzhou was a major trading hub. From the late 1930’s to the end of World War II Suzhou was occupied by the Japanese, with further damaging effect, but beginning in the 1950’s its economy and beauty have been substantially restored.
As we drove into Suzhou we began to get an idea of how large it really is, with many large complexes of tall and characterless apartment buildings (this was actually characteristic of everywhere we went in China).
Suzhou has some 69 classical gardens and we visited the largest (13 acres) and most renowned, the Humble Administrator’s Garden. In 1509 Wang Xianchen retired from his government job, which he found unrewarding, determined to lead a simpler life growing plants and vegetables. He built this garden over the next 16 years and, when he died, his son disposed of it to pay gambling debts. At least that is the most popular version. We have read that the name of the garden has alternatively been translated as the Inept Administrator’s Garden or the Unsuccessful Politician’s Garden and our guide told us that Wang was actually forced to resign by the Emperor because of corruption. We don’t know what is true here, but either way the Garden is extremely beautiful, even in winter when we visited and many trees were bare and few flowers had grown.
The classical design of the garden is built around four main elements: rocks, water, plants and buildings. The idea is to provide a contemplative environment through which one can walk and enjoy the vista in every direction. If it weren’t for the crowds of tourists that showed up beginning in mid-morning this garden would undoubtedly achieve that aim. Inside the entrance were flower gardens, among the few flowers we saw already in bloom.
This garden is larger and has a much more open feeling than the one we saw in Shanghai yesterday, partly because there were a lot fewer walls here. The vistas were generally more vast and the combination of buildings, trees and water were hard to beat. Keep in mind that later in the year many of these water features would have large numbers of lotus flowers floating on top. Also there would be a lot more greenery after the trees leaf out.
This shows the “Whom-To-Sit-With Pavilion” in the center, with roof, stone floor and window shaped like fans. Reputedly named for an old poem: “With whom shall I sit? Bright Moon, gentle Breeze and myself.”
Particularly attractive was the “Green-Embracing Pavilion,” which had a moon shaped window in an open grid-like wall with a decorative rock on display in the center.
We have read that the “Small Flying Rainbow Bridge” is a rare type of bridge, but we don’t know what makes it rare. It is, however, quite beautiful and tranquil.
Many of the stone buildings in the garden have windows with decorative grills, the sort that let you see out while people passing outside cannot see in. The notable thing is that the decorative grill on each window is different from all the others. Here is a wall of such windows and the views out of four others.
Several other vistas were particularly stunning. One of them has a pagoda in the distance beyond the water and a stone bridge. We think this is the octagonal 249 foot tall Beisi Ta, originally built in the 12th century and last renovated in 2006. There were Mandarin ducks in this pond, an amazingly well decorated species thatis a symbol of fidelity in China.
A second fetching water view was seen through the attractively carved shutters of a pavilion, possibly the “Tower of Reflection.” Note in the distance what looks like a pagoda shaped cupola behind the building, which can be seen in closer views below.
While this all looks very natural, it is actually carefully planned and constructed to provide the desired views. You can see that clearly in one scenic bend in a water way where there are pipes that emit a mist to create the desired atmosphere.
This seems to be the two story “Mountain Viewing Tower,” with a zig-zag bridge leading to it, said to represent a dragon (round opening on the left is the mouth, slanting stairway in the back is the tail).
Not to be neglected are the pathways, many of which are stone mosaics, most with patterns but some with pictures of wildlife.
We left the gardens through a building filled with period furniture. There was also an intricately carved palanquin in which the family of one of the owners were carried around town, and a relief map of the gardens that appears to be sculpted in stone.
Everyone knows about the Great Wall of China, but before this trip we had never heard of the Grand Canal of China. At more than 1100 miles it is the longest canal in the world. It is also the oldest canal in the world, the oldest parts dating to the 5th century BCE. The modern “pound” locks (with two gates that allow raising or lowering a boat in the area between them) were invented by the Chinese for use on this canal in the 10th century CE. The section of the canal that runs through Suzhou was built early in the 5th century BCE. While the canal has had its ups and downs, it made Suzhou a commercial powerhouse during the middle ages and, after some reconstruction and improvement after the 1949 revolution, it still carries a large amount of Suzhou’s trade today.
The section of the Grand Canal that runs through Suzhou is called the Jinghang canal. In Suzhou it runs along two sides of the old town outside what is left of the old city walls and served as a defensive moat as well as a transport route. We didn’t see that part, but we did have a boat ride along part of the canal after we left the Humble Administrator’s Garden. We had a nice walk through that part of town to the wharf where we boarded a long red river boat. Our walk crossed a couple of stone bridges and walked down a street lined with kite-looking fish above our heads.
We understand that the stone bridges and whitewashed houses on the canal are several hundred years old. Many of the houses lack bathrooms (public bathrooms are available in the area) and many occupants wash their clothes in the canal. We went under an arched stone bridge and passed a number of the white houses, most with red lanterns hanging outside. At night these lanterns are lit up and there are lights on the bridges, which must give the area a romantic ambiance. Unfortunately, by the time night fell we were already at sea in the Zuiderdam.
The best spot for photography was outside on the front of the boat, but you couldn’t stay there because it would obstruct everybody else’s view. Rick walked up there once or twice to take some pictures, but mostly we were limited to photographing through the side windows where we were sitting, which only gave a view of one side of the canal.
Several smaller canals branch off the Grand Canal in Suzhou’s old town area. Marco Polo, who claimed to have visited here in the 13th century, called it the “Venice of the East.” From what we saw it doesn’t quite reach that height of grandeur, but you get the idea. Anyway, we passed several small stone bridges spanning intersections where these smaller canals branched off.
Many of the houses along the canal had porches or landings through which they interacted with the canal. Some had steps down to the water, some had laundry hanging by the water’s edge and some had other things stored on their decks.
Most of the canal side buildings were houses of a similar plain, whitewashed design. But there were a few that were more elaborate (one looked like it could be a temple), and we also passed what looked like a family watching us from a park with steps down to the water.
As we returned to the dock the canal opened into a much wider space. We went under a large stone bridge and passed a smaller wood and stone bridge leading to another branching canal. Walking back to the bus we had a nice view down another narrower canal lined with houses on both sides.
We had a Chinese lunch at a very nice hotel; the round tables had turntables in the middle for passing the platters. It is no surprise that here in the far east the streets are crowded with motorcycles and motor scooters. But it was a chilly day and the riders wore a kind of blanket with sleeves ending in oven mitts to keep warm while riding in the cold breeze. We had not seen anything like that before. When they left their scooters they just left these blanket things sitting there where anyone could make off with them. I guess that sort of thing is not done here.
After lunch we visited the Silk Embroidery Research Institute. Suzhou has been a center of production of silk embroidery for well over 2,000 years. Suzhou (or Su) Embroidery is one of four main types of silk embroidery in China, centering on subjects from nature, such as animals, birds and plants, although these days it is not limited to those subjects. Silk embroiderers in Suzhou use up to 40 different kinds of needles and 1,000 kinds of thread, dyed in a variety of colors. A single raw silk thread can be divided into up to 16 separate embroidery threads. One unusual Suzhou specialty is two-sided embroidery, which has a different picture on each side. Perhaps a white cat on front and a black cat on the back, or even a cat on the front and a dog on the back. Since both sides are visible, the ends of the silk strands are not knotted, but woven into the pattern in a way that makes them invisible to a viewer.
This embroidery is quite an art. We have read that even a very small silk embroidery takes about three months to complete, a medium size one takes a year and a large one can take three years or more. Many of these artists only produce about 15 works during their entire careers. No wonder they are expensive.
We spent some time in the work room watching the individual embroidery artists at work. We were told that to do this job you must have excellent eyesight but we wondered whether they still have that after doing this every day for a decade or two. The work was being done mostly by light coming from a large bank of windows and most of the embroiderers were working from a picture.
After leaving the work room we were taken to a show room where a large variety of embroideries were for sale in many shapes and sizes and mountings, including some two sided ones. It was all quite dazzling but outside our budget, sadly, and many were too big to carry home on a cruise ship anyway. Unfortunately, photography was not permitted in the showroom.
Leaving the Embroidery Institute we boarded the bus for the long ride back to the ship, on which we sailed away at 5:00 (the early departure is why this excursion left the ship so early in the morning). We had a welcome sea day to rest up before our next stop in China.
Shanghai, China (Day 1) 2024
We arrived in Shanghai, our first stop in China, on the morning of March 7. Shanghai is a humongous city (25 million people, 3d largest in the world) located where the Yangtze River empties into the East China Sea. It has a long and colorful history dating back some 6,000 years. Starting out as a fishing village it became an important center for international trade in the mid-19th century, after the first Opium War, when it was one of five ports forced to open to European trade and European “concession” settlements. By the 1930’s it was a leading commercial and financial hub of Asia. Very cosmopolitan, Shanghai was a refuge for White Russians fleeing the revolution in the 1920’s and for Jews fleeing the Nazis in the 1930’s. During that period the city gained a reputation for danger and international intrigue. Indeed, since the 19th century, “shanghaied” was a term for drugging and kidnapping, stemming from the practice of filling out ship crews with abducted sailors. Shanghai was occupied by the Japanese during the second Sino-Japanese war that was a precursor of World War II, with great suffering. In 1949 it became part of the new Communist People’s Republic of China and its economy was rebuilt.
Originally we were scheduled to begin the Chinese leg of our voyage in Beijing. But obtaining a Chinese visa was somewhat challenging and it turned out that visitors who begin their visits to China in Shanghai can spend a few days there and in other coastal cities without having to get a visa. So HAL changed the itinerary a few months before we left Florida so we would start in Shanghai and end in Beijing (Tianjin). The caveat was that folks without a visa could only leave the ship on a ship sponsored tour, or one conducted by a government approved tour provider. Some folks went ahead and got a visa to visit places further inland, but we had never been to China before and wanted to spend our time in the port areas anyway. So we were happy for this change. Although some of our excursions here were conducted by our travel agency, those were treated as ship sponsored tours as well. Which was good because today we were scheduled for two of them.
We left the port early in the morning. Passing through customs was fairly slow and some people were redirected for additional scrutiny, although it seemed everybody we saw made it through eventually. For the most part Chinese customs was pretty bureaucratic and slow in all the cities we visited. It is possible for some cruise ships to sail up the river and dock downtown, but our ship was too large for that (it sure would be nice if HAL would prioritize using smaller ships for these longer journeys). So there was about an hour bus ride from our dock by the ocean to downtown Shanghai. Bus riding isn’t our favorite pastime, but there is something to be said for seeing the city streets as you drive along.
Our first stop was at the Jade Buddha Temple, opened originally in 1882 and rebuilt in the current location in 1928 after the original was destroyed during the revolution that overthrew the monarchy. As the name suggests, it was built to house two large jade Buddha statues, one reclining and one seated, that were brought here from Burma by a monk. This is an active monastery with dozens of monks on the premises, although we didn’t encounter any. The entrance is through a distinctive long yellow wall with red lanterns above it.
After entering we walked into a courtyard with buildings on several sides. An incense burner was at work in the middle and the eaves of the buildings were hung with red lanterns. The carefully sculptured trees in this area, trimmed to look like green clouds, were hung with red prayer tags. On the far side was the Great Hall, the main building of the complex.
If you look closely at the first picture in the group above, you will see a sculptured relief medallion on each side of the row of doors. They are very colorful. You should also notice the sculptural details on the ends of the rooftop.
This is one of the largest temples in China, with three main halls containing some 72 chambers. We did not have time to see most of that and the guidance we received was minimal and hurried. Thinking back, we are not even sure we saw the two large jade buddha statues that were the reason the temple was built, and even if we did see one or both of them photography was prohibited.
We did, however, walk through some of the notable chambers in the Great Hall. We walked through a room with three giant gold plated seated buddhas. On either side of this hall is a row of golden guardian deities, and we saw at least one row of these (we think). And there was a collection of dozens of small statues with a big one making up a single display, called “Guanyin, Sudhana and his 53 teachers.”
We mentioned that we have no pictures of the main sitting and reclining jade buddhas, but we did see a couple of smaller reclining buddhas in a different room (not sure which one). They were encased in glass in red and gold displays. On the left below are a photo and a closeup of the white reclining buddha (ceramic we think) and on the right is a photo and a closeup of the colored reclining buddha (jade, maybe?).
Another unidentified room contained a large plaque with a deity sculpted in relief, all shiny gold, and a room with rows of tables where people were writing, presumably prayers.
So we left the temple through the courtyard at which we began and headed for the bus (which took a while to arrive). Walking through the courtyard we passed a metal dragon urn, we saw some brightly colored sculptures on a roof and we enjoyed the patterns of the graceful upturned eaves of the roofs of the buildings.
We drove to our next place to visit, the Yuyuan Gardens. On the way we saw a variety of buildings from the window and we made a brief stop to walk over to a spot with a distant view of the very tall buildings lining the opposite shore of the Huangpu River that runs through the center of the city. We thought we would have a chance to walk along the river esplanade but we stopped well short of that. The skyline of the Pudong section across the river has some of the world’s tallest buildings and has become, in the last 20 or 30 years, a recognizable emblem of Shanghai. Notable in the pictures below are the 2,000+ foot high Shanghai Tower and the 1500+ foot high Oriental Pearl Broadcasting Tower.
Yuyuan Gardens sits in the center of the old town, which was surrounded by large defensive walls that were built built in 1554 to protect from Japanese pirates (and torn down in 1912 to accommodate city expansion). The Yuyuan Garden was first built in 1559, just four years after the city walls. Pan Yunduan built the gardens to comfort his parents in their old age. But he was transferred away to be governor of Sichuan province, which delayed completion of the gardens until 1577. Over the centuries the gardens passed through several owners and were expanded, damaged and restored. In 1842 the British used it as a base during the first Opium War and during the Taiping Rebellion many of the buildings were damaged when the Small Swords Society used it as a headquarters. The gardens were damaged again in 1942 during the Japanese occupation of the city. The gardens were repaired in the 1950’s and opened to the public in 1961.
The gardens encompass five acres in six areas divided by Dragon Walls, which have undulating tops with dark tiles looking like a dragon’s tail and sculpted dragon heads at the ends. Very cool. There are passages through the walls between the separate areas, at least one of which is a moon gate.
The pavilions are mostly red in traditional Chinese style with roofs curving up on the end. Many of them sit next to landscaped ponds and are connected by curving covered bridges.
As you can see in some of the pictures above, landscaping rocks are an important feature of these gardens. Many were imported from distant lake areas and were used to build carefully designed “rockeries.” The most famous rock, considered the jewel of the gardens, is the “Exquisite Jade Rock,” around 13 feet tall and full of holes created by nature. It is said that the smoke from a burning taper placed under the rock will exit through all the holes in the rock.
And of course this is a garden, so it had a lot of very colorful flowers, although there would probably be many more later in the Spring or Summer. White ducks were swimming in the ponds.
Our time was too short to see all of the gardens (at least in the opinion of our guide, who seemed pretty rushed all day). We left through a gate with stone lions on each side and proceeded to the Yuyuan Bazaar. We had been told we would have free time in the old town, which sounded good, but it turned out that the place we had free time was a huge shopping mall right next to the gardens. To be sure, it was in the old town and it had some very impressive buildings with traditional Chinese architecture. We don’t know whether these are old buildings repurposed for shopping (possible, since this was in the old city area) or new buildings designed to look like old ones; either way they were interesting to see. But still, a shopping mall was not what we were hoping for. We must have spent at least an hour there; we looked through some interesting stores but the prices were high and we didn’t see anything that called our names. We understand that these buildings are dramatically lighted at night, but we weren’t here then.
The long drive back to the port left us just enough time to eat dinner in the LIdo buffet and get ready to board another bus for our evening excursion, a boat ride on the Huangpu River lined with lighted buildings, near where we had spent the afternoon. This river is some 70 miles long and flows into the Yangtze just before it enters the ocean. It has been a commercial backbone of the city for centuries, reputedly assisted by some engineering during the 16th century that enabled water from a lake to flow into the river near its source. This is hardly the Amazon, but it is a sizeable river: in Shanghai the river varies between 1,000 and 2,500 feet in width and averages 30 feet deep. On its west bank is Puxi (the old city) and on its east bank is Pudong.
We arrived at the terminal on the west bank at about sundown and the nearby buildings were already lighted.
We spent a good bit of time winding through the long line for admittance to the dock. It was actually a fairly long walk, including some stairways. By the time we reached the dock the sun was down and we walked down the dock to board the boat. On a tip we went upstairs and right to the back of the boat, where we had the best view of both sides of the river during the entire cruise, which lasted close to an hour.
Along the riverfront on the west (old city) side is a mile long row mostly of 100+ year old buildings called the Bund (sounds German, but actually from a Hindi word for embankment). There is a wide concrete promenade between the buildings and the river. This was the financial center of Shanghai in the 1920’s & 30’s when Shanghai was a financial center of Asia. The architecture here is stolid European style, reflecting the power of the American and European concessions that were located behind it. In the 1950’s many of the banking institutions here moved to Hong Kong. This area was restored about 15 years ago.
So here are some pictures (handheld from a moving boat at night, so many are not entirely clear). We will try to identify each building as best we can.
— First is a panorama of the Bund shoreline.
–The Second shows the old Hongkong & Shanghai Banking Corp (HSBC) building (built in 1923) and the Customs House (1927) (the clock and tower were built in England and copied from Big Ben).
–The third picture includes (from left) the China Bank of Communications Bldg (built in 1948) now housing the Shanghai Council of Trade Unions; the Russo-Chinese Bank Bldg, now the Shanghai Gold Exchange; the Bank of Taiwan Bldg, now the China Merchants Bank; the North China Daily News Bldg, now AIA insurance; and the Chartered Bank Bldg, now home to several businesses.
–The large building in the first picture below is the Bund Center, with its easy to see lotus flower crown brightly lit, a little way back from the riverfront. It was built in 2002 and is 659 ft tall. The building on the lower right is the Telegraph Building, in middle is the China Merchants Bank and at the lower left is the Nissin Navigation Co. Bldg (more info on these below).
–The second picture below shows it again, with a larger building in front sporting a red pyramidal roof which we haven’t been able to identify.
–The first picture below includes (from left) the North China Daily News Bldg; the Chartered Bank Bldg; the Palace Hotel, built in 1906, which was one of the best hotels in Shanghai until 1949, when it merged with the next building to form the Peace Hotel. That building, originally called Sassoon House, with its distinctive green pyramidal roof, was built by tycoon Victor Sassoon in 1929 and had a famous jazz band in its cafe (which can be seen again today). The tall rectangular building on the right is the Bank of China Bldg, built in 1937 by H.H. Kung, a rival of Sassoon’s. Its height was cut short because of Sassoon’s insistence that no other building on the Bund could be taller than his. Rivals indeed.
–The second picture below is of the Shanghai People’s Heroes Memorial Tower, built in 1993 and located in Huangpu Park. To its right you can just barely see the Waibaidu Bridge, lit red like the Memorial, crossing Suzhou Creek. Built in 1907, it was the first steel bridge in China.
–The third picture below shows (from left): the Shanghai Club (we think), built in 1910; The Nissen Bldg, built in 1925 by a Japanese shipping company; the China Merchants Bank Bldg, home to the first Chinese owned bank in China; and The Great Northern Telegraph Bldg, which in 1882 had the first telephone switch in town. In the distance on the right with the white spires is the Shimao International Plaza, which is more than 1,000 feet tall and opened in 2006.
Hard to see in the dark, but there were some parks near the river, one with what looked like a brightly lighted dragon, and some other excursion boats on the river.
On the east bank of the Huangpu the waterfront of the Pudong New District is called Lujiazui. It occupies a peninsula where the river bends. The area was mostly farmland, warehouses, factories and commercial wharves until 1990 when China began developing it into a financial and commercial center. Today it far outshines the older and smaller buildings of the Bund across the river in both the size and modern design of the buildings along its skyline. Probably few will fail to recognize at least some of it. At night it is illuminated with brightly colored lights. While we don’t know the names of most of the Pudong buildings, we can tell you that the four tallest buildings in Shanghai, and among the tallest in the world, are there: The 1,400 foot Jin Mao Tower (1999), the 1,600 foot Shanghai World Financial Center (2007), the 2,000+ foot Shanghai Tower (2015), and the almost 1,500 foot Oriental Pearl (Broadcast) Tower (1995). They aren’t hard to spot in the pictures . . . The Shanghai Tower is obviously the tallest, the Jin Mao Tower is shaped like a very tall pagoda with a pointy roof, the World Finance Center has a large hole in the top, looking like a giant beer bottle opener, and the Oriental Pearl is made of struts and spheres. But we will name them in the picture captions (which you can see on a computer by hovering your mouse over the picture).
So these river banks are bright and shiny kaleidoscopes of light and color, a pretty spectacular sight as we cruised up and down the river. But that’s not all: some of them continuously change their lighting pattern as the show goes on. Below is a good example of this, the 1.000+ foot White Magnolia Plaza, which opened in 2017. It is on the Puli side of the river, slightly up river from the Bund. Here are four pictures of it showing its changing light presentations (though always with a golden roof).
Well this was quite a lot for one day exploring Shanghai, particularly since it included 4 one hour long bus rides to and from the dock. But this is a city with quite a lot to see and we hardly scratched the surface. We drove back to the ship and went to bed, because our excursion for the second day in Shanghai leaves at 6:30 AM. Yikes!
BADER JOURNAL 
