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When I visited Tianjin I went to Ancient Culture Street, which is a self-consciously tourist oriented mall with a mixture of good and bad items, authentic crafts and mass produced kitsch. Beware the plastic and beware the high prices of anything real. Having said that, there are a few shops selling stuff that is as good as you will get around China. I remember one shop with beautiful pieces of carved jade that I longed to buy, but it was too expensive for my budget at the time. Then there were lots of Chinese paper cuts in various sizes and some of the best kites I have seen in shops.

In Ancient Culture Street is the Temple of Matsu. Throughout the Temple were boards giving information about the Goddess. Aside from their claim that the real woman who became an object of worship was a Tianjin resident the story differs little from the general legend of Matsu or Mazu throughout the coasts of East Asia. Generally she is recognized to have been a real woman born in 960 on an island in Fujian province of China. The child is said to have been a silent baby who did not cry for some time after she was born and developed an interest in Buddhism in early childhood. She took instruction in the religion from the age of thirteen and developed powers to predict the weather and perform healing acts. Her particular concern was for the welfare of fishermen and it is said she even walked out on the waves of the sea to rescue people. It is also commonly said that she went up to a mountain and was taken up to heaven when she was 28 years old. The patterns of this story are reflected in religions worldwide and appear in the Christian Bible among others.

For Buddhists, Matsu is a Bodhisattva and for others she is a goddess. The boards in the Tianjin temple tell that an Emperor came to test her holiness during her life and it is true that various Emperors gave their imprimatur to her deity as the centuries progressed. There are variations in the story in different locations but it is remarkable that the dates given for her birth and death are so firm. It is certain that a remarkable woman of saintly character lived on the coast of China from 960 to 988, most likely in Fujian province, and that she was a devout Buddhist recognized in her own lifetime and in her own locality as a person of advanced spiritual knowledge.

We were picked up at our hotel for another tour and our guide was a pleasant young Chinese man. Foreigners sat together at the back of the mini-bus under his charge. Lumped together were a Thai, a German, a Japanese, and three Australians who all spoke English and little Chinese. The first stop was Famen Si, a temple/museum where some finger bones of Buddha are said to be located. We were told King Asoka, the famous Buddhist ruler, decided to divide the pieces of Gautama’s corpse to be distributed to all the countries which had adopted the faith. I am not sure if this is now a practicing temple as I saw no evidence of it. Instead it is more of a museum and worships the god of money, the faith of the majority of modern Chinese. In the main hall our guide was trying to give us some information but was drowned out by a guide with a microphone and speaker set draped around her neck blaring out Chinese noise. I asked her to stop but she didn’t. Later I went to the booth where these guides are for hire and discussed the situation with the person I thought was the senior there. The strange response was “thank you.”

It is sad to see objects of devotion in such a context. There is a history of lack of respect for the divine here, not only in the Cultural Revolution era, but I wonder if it is a longer term characteristic of a country where church has served to bolster state for millennia. In a roofed verandah by the gate were carved steles of Buddha figures, most of which had their faces smashed off.

We went from there to Li Shan, Mount Li, and climbed the stairs to a crevice where Chiang Kai Shek attempted to hide when Communist troopers invaded his residence, killing all of his guards. The residence was at the Huaqing Palace and he ran to the mountain in an unsuccessful attempt to hide. We are told the rational for the capture was to get him to agree to cooperate with the Red Army to defeat the Japanese and soon he signed that agreement. The misnomer ‘peaceful’ was used for the ‘Xian Incident’ (remember the dead guards - maybe they were ‘incidental casualties’).

From there we went to a warehouse where we were forced to endure the attentions of salespeople who followed us (one each) round the shop urging us to buy and letting us know they would give us a ’special price’. Everything in Xian is at a special price. Ellen saw a beautiful malachite necklace and I succeeded in getting it for her at 60% off by being totally non-negotiable. I walked off and let the staff haggle amongst themselves about accepting my one and final offer. They came back and said yes.

The emperor’s tomb was next and I sat in the shade and had an ice cold juice while Ellen went in and sent me phone messages - “Boring!”, etc. We got back on the bus and drove to a restaurant that was once a warehouse and had been hastily furnished like a factory canteen where we were charged double the normal price for a sparse menu of Chinese food that we believe gave me diarrhoea a couple of days later. The only drinks were beer and water. The water was free and about as cool as tap water from a hot mains pipe.

Finally we arrived at the highlight of the trip, the Warriors. They are only one part of the area of Qin Shi Huang’s burial site, their hallways unsealed and invaded shortly after their entombment and the proud images of the Emperor’s soldiers smashed to a collection of fragments, thus creating the biggest jigsaw puzzle in the world, now being put together piece by piece by patient archaeologists. One of our new friends bought a book and had it signed by one of the farmers who discovered the wonder. He seemed unimpressed by the Laowai invaders now inspecting his trove and behaved rudely in carrying out his role of celebrity. This really is a wonder of the world, created at the request of one of the most successful and megalomaniac tyrants and conquerors who ever lived. The enormous area which is the site of Qin Shi Huang’s tomb dwarfs the pyramids. Only a small portion of it has been excavated by archaeologists. Much of the Terracotta Army is not to be uncovered until scientists have a solution for the rapid fading of the original bright colours under exposure to air and light.

Everyone was weary from the hot day and constant harassment to buy and the bus headed back to the city. To our dismay it pulled into a parking area and we were asked to get off again as the driver ‘had to clean the bus’. It was no surprise that we were to take shelter in a Chinese supermarket. I went to our guide, Bruce by English name, and told him that in Australia we would not accept any of the commercial pressure that had gone on during our trip and said that if they wanted us to buy stuff they should say so instead of lying to us about the bus needing to be cleaned. No cleaning was taking place. When he and I went inside to keep cool by the door we found all the other non-Chinese ignoring the shelves and as a group they approached him about the same issue. He said that the Chinese like to look at products they can’t buy in their own cities. Maybe so, the others were distributed around the aisles. I told him he should inform his boss that this sort of thing is insulting to foreign visitors.

I neglected to say we had no lunch stop because the planned restaurant had closed and the bus driver refused to look for another. Shining girl was less impressed than me, and that’s saying something.

On our last day in Chengdu we took the panda tour. This time we had a competent guide and the weather was good. The Panda Research Station is a nicely laid-out place with plenty of climbing platforms and other things for Pandas to play on. They are really the loveliest creatures I have ever seen, both lazier and funnier than Koalas and just as beautiful. Playful and gentle, they are a treasure we should never allow to die out. I watched incredulously as they lay sprawled on their backs reaching up the occasional lazy arm to grab another stalk of bamboo to crunch. This time we made no mistake with the camera. It would have been possible to cuddle one but the four hundred yuan ‘donation’ required seemed excessive to one dependent on a Chinese salary.

The site also has Red Pandas. I had never even heard of them but they are creatures which look like a red raccoon and lend credibility to the racoon side of the debate about whether pandas are related to bears or racoons. I wondered if Red Pandas are related to Giant Pandas. Their gentle natures and eating habits are similar but Red Pandas only require a donation of fifty yuan before they allow someone to cuddle them. SG cuddled a gorgeous little creature but had to wear plastic gloves as it sat munching a piece of apple in her lap. We were told that the reason for the gloves is that some people are allergic to the fur. I would have thought they were to keep human germs from infecting the Pandas but when one English woman said, “I don’t mind, I’m not allergic” she was allowed to handle it without the gloves.

Our American friend was in the party again and I also chatted with a lovely American lady who was in China for the second time, studying Chinese. She had taught previously. It was such a contrast to see her taking care not to block people’s view and being conscious of the effect of her presence on the convenience of others. Such un-Chinese behaviour.

We had the driver let us off near my bank on the way back and then we window shopped again and got lost as usual before getting a taxi to Grandma’s Kitchen. The food was good when we actually found something that was both on the menu and in the kitchen. That was about it for Chengdu. Being a fast reader I managed to read The Da Vinci Code, much to the chagrin of my daughter, who was still reading one of the author’s other books after several days.

We had booked a tour to Leshan to see the giant Buddha (Da Fo) but as we made our way towards the hostel office I half hoped it had been cancelled. It was pouring rain and I had no raincoat or umbrella. Ellen had bought a folding umbrella somewhere. The tour was on though I really think it should not have been. However, I didn’t let it worry me and kept in good humour all day. The bus took about two and a half hours to get there, arriving at half past ten and leaving at two o’clock. We had been told that the leaving time would be a collective decision but the driver told us the time. There was no guide and no guidance. We were dropped at the foot of the mountain and pointed towards an entrance to a forested area and not in the car park of the real entry to the area where the Buddha was located. There were many stairs to climb until we came to a small pagoda. At the top we made friends with a pleasant young American who works for Time Magazine in New York. We descended from there towards where we thought the Buddha was. Direction signs were inadequate and we got lost, arriving at a lower parking area. I asked for directions and we climbed back up to the parking lot of the real entrance to the information centre near Da Fo (Big Buddha). Was our dropping off point another cost skimmer, I wonder?

I was soaked through and the American and I had both slipped on the slimy pathways. He went first and seemed to be going to keep sliding down a flight of steps and as I rushed and stooped to help him I went down too. Neither of us was hurt and we all had a good laugh but the pathway was on the edge of a steep slope and if we had fallen that way we would have slid at speed a long distance on the muddy hill slope and likely done ourselves some damage.

There are various small shrines and rock-cut sculptures on the hill, some modern and some old. The older ones have taken on green moss and the pink sandstone has weathered to create beautiful hues. The temple and information buildings are well worth seeing and Da Fo is wonderful. He is truly enormous with each curl on his head carved on a block of stone as big as an average kitchen stool. The rain continued heavily and people were forbidden from descending the steps on either side of the Buddha to see the view from the bottom (of the cliff) but even from only the level of his head it was an excellent experience. Da Fo is a huge Buddha carved out of a cliff. One of us pressed a wrong button on the camera and I was a bit brain-fagged and couldn’t figure out how to reset it so I only got thumbnail sized pictures. It happens!

Yes, you can, but it is much more fun if you can talk to people who can’t speak English. Here’s an example of how it goes when you are at a loss and don’t know what to do and don’t have the words to ask someone. I was standing on a street corner looking lost one evening and two sweet girls came up to me and asked if I needed any help. Maybe I have a particularly lost looking face but I know it happens to other foreigners too. If you stand around looking baffled someone will come up to you and ask if you need help. Usually they have enough English to understand your problem and they always want stay with you long enough to be sure you get what you want, whether it is a train ticket, the correct bus and the right stop to get off at, or the right piece of fruit at a fair price.

There is a lot of talk around about Putonghua, known as Mandarin Chinese, which is based on the Beijing dialect, being almost useless to one who wants to travel around China because of the multitude of mutually unintelligible local dialects. It’s not true. It is true that each area has its own ‘hua’ (dialect, language). China is like an enormous Britain in the density of dialects and I think it is because it is a tonal language that the dialects verge on being mutually unintelligible, however, the more educated a Chinese is the more skilled in Putonghua so wherever you go someone will understand you. Most Chinese TV programmes are in Putonghua so most Chinese people have some grasp of the central dialect. If you’ve got the time and the energy and you want to come to China for any length of time learn Mandarin. Maybe your accent is terrible. The solution to that is to learn to write Mandarin Chinese. Another amazing thing about China is that every Chinese dialect uses the same written characters for the same meaning so you will find taxi drivers who can’t understand you offering you a piece of paper and a pen to write your meaning. Funnily enough, some of them have so little knowledge of the world that they think English, French or German are huas and therefore have the same writing. It surprises them when you can’t write the characters which could show your meaning.

I wish I had applied myself to read and write Chinese so I could communicate with people from all the districts of China but with a few hundred words of Mandarin I got started and now I have a lot of fun having conversations with people in my kindergarten level Chinese. It’s a big thrill getting my meaning across to someone who speaks a totally different language to my own.

Shanghai Airport

Well, actually it has two, Hong Qiao, which is mainly domestic and Pu Dong, the international airport. I’ll talk about Pu Dong. The terminal building is a beautiful piece of architecture and there are scores of shops filled with beautiful goods. As usual, the prices go up as you get nearer to your arrival or departure point. Waiting for a plane to leave for Sydney once, I felt very thirsty and went along to the nearest food outlet. I pointed to a drink and an ice cream and asked how much they were. When the salesgirl told me 124 yuan I almost died laughing. ‘Hao wanr!’ (You’re kidding me!) I said and she assured me she was serious. ‘Tai gui le!’ (Too expensive). I turned away still laughing to find a pretty supervisor standing watching. I said again, ‘Hao wanr! Tai gui le!’ and managed to make her smile a little and break her professional reserve. The drink is usually 3.5 yuan in a local shop and even a Haagen-Daz costs no more than thirty yuan at the average Chinese outlet.

That should illustrate why I don’t recommend buying anything at Shanghai Airport. If you’re coming to China be patient and buy things in the shops or. better still, the markets, after you land. Once you get an idea of the normal prices you will be aware when you have wandered into a high priced tourist focussed shop. They are always too dear. I bought a beautiful ethnic batik cloth in a Guiyang street market and later saw the same design in two tourist shops that charged four times what I paid.

Back to the airport, it is efficient but big so if you have a difficulty with walking quickly allow plenty of time to catch your plane. There are travelators in places but it is still a long way to the most distant gates. The shops are a great diversion if you use them as museums for learning about the diversity of goods available in China.

One very important tip. If you have to make a domestic connection you can get bus no 1 between the two airports for about thirty yuan (RMB). If you accept the offers of the many taxi drivers who promise you a cheap fare you may end up paying ten times what you should. If they have a ‘cab’ without a taxi light on top don’t take it unless you really know what you should be paying and bargain them down. Most of these guys speak enough English to understand you. If the cab bears fleet paraphernalia insist they put the meter on before you get in. When I first arrived in China they cheated me well and I paid eight times what I now know is the metered fare between the two airports. It’s between eighty and a hundred yuan depending on traffic conditions.

Shanghai also has the Maglev, a magnetic levitation train that hurtles to town at incredible speeds. If you want to ride it arrive in the day time. It closes in the early evening so late arrivals will be disappointed if they are looking forward to it. In town you can find less rapacious taxi drivers but several times I have had the odd experience of having cabbies refuse to take me where I want to go because they don’t know where it is. Shanghai is a big city!

No one could have predicted that a young woman of a family that lived about sixty miles from the Yangtze river trading centre now known as Wuhan would be the subject of a Disney cartoon movie sixteen centuries later. She joined the army in her father’s place during China’s Northern Dynasties period (386-351) fighting the invaders successfully and rising to the rank of General. No one knew she was a woman until she returned home and appeared before her comrades in women’s clothing. All we know of her historically comes from a feature length poem by an anonymous female poet, one of the few pieces of classic Chinese literature to have a strength role for a woman. The legend has been preserved since then in novels, plays, and more recently in films, including the Disney cartoon, Mulan.

Mulan Shan, Mulan mountain, is a historical, religious and ecologically significant area a day trip away from Wuhan. It was renamed after its most famous inhabitant, Hua Mulan, It is said that all the grasses, the trees, the rocks and the scenery on the mountain have recorded the legend of General Mulan. A Temple has been built in her honour there. Mulan Mountain has hosted religious shrines for more than 1000 years, beginning in the Sui and Tang Dynasties and developed further in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Buddhists and Taoists have existed peacefully together there since that time. There are seven temples, eight shrines, and more than 1000 sacred statues. Every year about 1 million pilgrims come from the surrounding areas to worship. The buildings merge into the steep mountainside.

An ecotourism protection zone will be established on the Mulan Mountain area, with a protected area of 25,000 ha. and a lake area of 4,000 ha. The area has many natural and historical resources that warrant preservation. An island is the nesting site for more than 100 thousand white egrets from April to August of each year. A village in the naturally beautiful Mulan Valley has 52 buildings from the Ming dynasty period (about 400 years old). On Shesui Lake is a white sand beach, a natural fresh water bathing spot. Wuhan Institute of Botany under the Chinese Academy of Sciences recently decided to construct China’s North Asian Tropical Forest Ecological Positioning Station in the Mulan Mountain Area as it is a rare and endangered plant species conservation and migration base in the middle section of China. Its altitude ranges from 200 to 600 meters above sea level, occupying an area of about 22,000 mu(1mu=0.0667ha.). The Mountain’s forest coverage reaches 95% with one half virgin forest and the other half secondary vegetation, North Asian tropical evergreens, hardwood and broadleaf in more than 100 families, 300 genus and over 1000 species. Mulan Mountain area represents a transition from North Asian Tropical to Temperate. Thus, the area is ideal for studying North Asian tropical ecological system positioning. Such studies will provide scientific evidence and technical support for the restoration of forest coverage and ecological environment control over North Asian tropical hilly areas.

Mulan Shan is a beautiful scenic spot which is also of great historical and religious interest. The variety of points of interest make it well worth visiting. However, this is China and a walk in the countryside is not a quietly contemplative experience. Even on the quietest day you will have to negotiate the steep staircases through the forest at the pace of the slowest of the several hundred other people who have also come to see it and are ahead of you. At least this place is not so heavily commercialized as many other places. You won’t see many birds and those you do see will not come anywhere near you. If you live in China for more than a couple of years you will enjoy the chance to get out of the dirty city you live in and walk amongst trees and breath the oxygen produced by them. Mulan Shan is far more tasteful than many other places I have visited. Walking paths and staircases are helpful and blend well with the surroundings. There were no especially garish souvenir stalls and the local vendors were not aggressive. Cool fruits, whole or cut and mounted on sticks for consumption, were a welcome treat on a hot day. However, the heat was ameliorated by the cool forest. Oh, how I miss my Queensland rainforests where I could walk in a quiet forest with only small birds coming to gaze at me curiously, and very few people passing discreetly.

  You are in a taxi, curving round a wooded hill on a two-lane road and then you see it, the Yangtze River, known as the Chang Jiang in China, simply because Chang means long and Jiang means River. The Chinese are practical and simple when it comes to naming things other than food so the road becomes a bridge named First Bridge. You are a bit disappointed, because on this as on all days the great river is shrouded in smog. Below, you see one of the five-storey tour boats that travel through the Three Gorges to Chongqing. You strain your eyes to see the other side of the river and as your cab progresses something emerging on the other side catches your attention. It is a pagoda on a small hill at the other end of the bridge. It’s your destination.

Yellow Crane Tower, or Huang He Lou to the Chinese, has a history as obscure and misty as the smog on the river below but one thing is clear, it was not always part of a great industrial city. Perhaps it was built as a watch tower so some local ruler could keep surveillance over the traffic on the Chang Jiang or maybe it was built by a grateful innkeeper favoured by a magical visitor. History suggests the first and legend would have us believe the second.

Poets were perhaps attracted here first by the legend and found a view worthy of their verse. Later, in a very Chinese phenomenon, they were attracted by the fact that other poets had been here and came to try to write the very best Yellow Crane Tower poem. Now people come here mostly because they have read the poems and loved them. They want to see what Li Bai saw.

The original tower burnt down many centuries ago and several have burnt to the ground since. To save us the eyesore of a ruin the People’s government has built a beautiful new tower and beautified the grounds. It is certainly a nice piece of architecture in an ancient style and a pleasure to visit. You climb to the top storey and survey the soft focus landscape. You strain your eyes to see the hill by the other end of the great bridge. Unfortunately, the soft focus is not provided by a river mist rising in the half light of early morning or evening and what you see through the brownish haze is just another dirty city. You could have seen it in South America, or any Asian country prosperous enough to support a Metropolis, or in any one of twenty-odd Chinese cities. You could have seen it in Europe or America in my youth but we have learned since then.

Some locals would challenge my perception that there is never a clear day in Wuhan. The fact is that in fifteen months of residence and many crossings of the Yangtze I have never seen one riverbank clearly from the other. After many days of rain I expected the smog to have settled but it didn’t. The factories and the cars still operate. A few days of wind after the days of rain allowed me to have a wonderful experience. I looked up and saw a star, my first in Wuhan. The next morning I crossed the bridge again and couldn’t see the other side.

My favourite poem is by Li Bai and in it he is entranced by the view from Yellow Crane Tower, amazed at being able to see ‘the individual blades of grass on Parrot Island’. I was disappointed to find it difficult even to see Parrot Island, let alone the blades of grass. In itself the contrast between my experience and Li Bai’s is an experience of history and of what modern China and the industrial world defines as progress. Perhaps we and China can learn from that. When another generation has come to the time of life when pollutants have had their way with breath-challenged lungs, maybe Wuhan locals can be helped to climb the stairs of Yellow Crane Tower so they can share Li Bai’s experience of a wonderful view of the Long River.

It was a freezing day as I walked across the biggest public square in the world towards the big portrait of Chairman Mao on the Gate of Heavenly Peace. The North Wind in my face nearly blew my resolve and sent me scampering for a warm coffee shop but I huddled into my coat and continued. As I crossed the moat and walked through the tunnel below the vast gatehouse I thought of all those who could never have dared make this trip. Any attempt to enter the Forbidden City would have cost them their lives.

Jing Shan, the artificial hill sitting behind the Imperial Palace, failed in its purpose to ease the extremes of temperature that forever assailed the residents of the sacred precinct and I fought nipping in the ears and numbness in the hands as I sought to understand and appreciate the subtly planned beauties of my surroundings. It was good to be away for a while from the clamour of vendors that follows one through too many Chinese marvels. The government has wisely chosen to maintain the dignity of the world’s biggest and most opulent royal residence and forbid all but the most discreet merchants from operating within, and even the chosen must tout their wares in a quiet way. But watch out for girls or pairs of girls. They might quietly invite you to their college’s nearby art exhibition. Buy if you want but don’t go checking to see where your ‘contributions’ to student scholarships went to.

The home of twenty-four Emperors of China is exquisite. Every decoration, every tint, every object, every sculpture, has a purpose to serve in a complex intellectual unity that only scholars now understand, but the beauty and harmony is accessible to all. A sunbrella here, a scratched yellow wooden chair there, stand out amusingly as being ridiculously out of place but workers are workers the world over. Though you would never have guessed the amazing incongruity I spotted as I was about to drop onto a bench from tiredness.

Gu Gong, the Palace Museum, another name for the place, is big, very big. It takes a lot of walking and a lot of energy in a cold wind to see it all. Coincidentally, or not, just as you begin to flag and think wearily of that coffee shop you didn’t run to from Tiananmen Square, a miracle appears. Or is it a temptation spawned by the devil to turn you from the divine words in your Bible of Political Correctness? STARBUCKS!!! At one end of a discreetly located tourist shop in the middle of the Emperor’s Palace. I must confess that I yielded and was glad to participate in this travesty. My soul was further embroiled in the doom of acceptance and even gratefulness for the abomination when a customer rose to leave and I appropriated the fleshly delight of one of the ten chairs. I wonder who would frown more severely on this encroachment, the Last Emperor or Chairman Mao? Someone could check if the maintenance costs on the cadaver in the glass box at the other end of Tiananmen Square have increased since the opening of Starbucks’ Forbidden City branch. How much is it costing to remove the scuff marks made by the Chairman’s revolution in his grave. China is full of anomalies and the Imperial Palace is almost free of them. I am torn within at my easy acceptance of the one that was permitted.

Modern China is as it is and was waiting for me outside. As I left through Tian an men gate again I was approached by two pleasant girls who were delighted to make my acquaintance. They invited me to walk with them through the old district of Dashilar and I was glad of the company. We looked around at the old establishments for a while. One was a Chinese pharmacy which catered for the very rich. A large and old ren shen (ginseng) root was for sale at a million yuan! In a country where an employee with an engineering degree can be paid two to four thousand yuan a month! After this one of the girls asked me if I had seen a traditional Chinese tea ceremony. I had not, and agreed to go in to a tea house which had stood in the same spot for at least a couple of centuries and survived the twentieth century’s revolutions and war. A pretty waitress described the qualities and history of an assortment of special teas and we sampled four of them in tiny cups. It was a pretty procedure, but casual compared to the art form the Japanese have made of it. When we had had enough we were invited to buy tea but I declined. The teas in this shop were definitely like expensive wine compared to the varieties I buy from tea shops around China but they were very much dearer too. After the sales pitch we were presented with a bill and the bill was over a thousand yuan, highway robbery in China! Of course I was obliged to pay and luckily I had enough cash. I made a big fuss about not being told the charges before the ceremony. Ok, so I’m daft for not checking. Days later I was browsing the net and learned this is a common scam and the two girls most likely set me up very professionally. Another Australian told me, a year later, that he was taken the same way, for three thousand. That’s six hundred Aussie dollars! It’s a shame because it makes one wary. It is a common and lovely experience for a foreigner to be approached by young men and women in China who genuinely want to have the experience of meeting a ‘laowai’ (respected foreign person) for no motive worse than improving their English. I would hate to lose the innocent pleasure of this superb part of the Chinese experience because I have been burnt by two Beijing-trained vultures. I was better off in Starbucks.