INTRODUCTION

In this WebLog you will find a chronological log of my trip to China in October 2007. Other than this brief introduction and notes along the way about where we were I don't plan to provide a blow-by-blow account of what we did. Instead, my goal is to tell you a little about what I learned about China and share some of my thoughts and observations. I hope you will consider this your own vicarious tour of China rather than a retelling of mine.

Rather than post the actual photos in the body of the blog I've decided to provide links to the corresponding Picasa Web Album where you can view all of the pictures for that segment of the trip. I will include links in the body of the log where you can find more information about some of the places we visited. I've also included links of other blogs and photo albums of interest.

As a side note, the majority of the photos here are mine. I've altered them slightly to make them more suitable for viewing in this format. If you want copies of anything I suggest you contact me (I'm happy to share) rather than printing from these images. I can provide you with a better version for printing. A few of the photos were taken by others in our group. I've used them here when they depict something I want to show but don't have a good photo of. I've also scanned in a few postcards for places where it was not possible to take good photos under the existing circumstances.

Melinda has been reading a lot about China for the last several years. She became more and more interested in visiting the country and after a nice visit with my friends Craig and Yoko during which they shared stories and photos of their 2005 trip our minds were made up. We soon booked a three week tour with the same company, China Focus Travel.

We left Seattle on the morning of October 3 and arrived in Beijing around dinner time on October 5 after being "on the road" for about 18 hours. After passing through Chinese customs and immigration and stepping out into the lobby of the Beijing airport the very first thing we saw straight in front of us was Starbucks! Unfortunately, I did not have my camera at the ready so I don't have a photo of that memorable sight.

There were several China Focus groups arriving at the same time so it took us all a little while to sort out who belonged to which group and with which guide. We finally met our national guide who introduced himself as "James Bond". His real name is Yuan Feng. It turns out that most of our local guides took western names as well. I believe the only two exceptions were Wen, our Beijing guide and Ling, our Guilin guide. At first I found that practice somewhat condescending, both for us and for them. Did they think that we couldn't pronounce or remember their names? Did they think we didn't value them enough as Chinese to care about calling them by their proper name? After talking with Melinda about it, I felt a little better. She suggested it was just sort of like a "game" any of us might play if we immersed ourselves in another culture - sort of like when students take a Spanish name while they are in their Spanish class. I guess that kind of makes sense but I would have preferred to use their real names.

There is a link to photos of the gang on the right in the Links list. The first one is a picture of James and the second is the one good picture I've seen of everyone in our group together. They are (clockwise from the bottom) Mae, Joey, and Jim (Joey's grandparents), Darrell and Lynda, Melinda, me,Elena and Tom, Dave and Brona, and John and Judy. This was a great group of people. We were quite lucky as I can't imagine a random group of people that could turn out to be more compatible. They were all interesting, intelligent, easy going and fun to be with.

ASIDE: Traffic in China is an amazing thing. The highways between the cities are relatively uncrowded roads in good repair so every thing went along as you might expect. In the cities it was an entirely different thing. In photos throughout this blog you will see examples of traffic in various cities. There is always a mix of buses (a lot in Beijing), cars (a lot in Hangshou), bicycles (a lot in Xi'an), scooters, various other contraptions like the 'Rhinos' mentioned further along and tricycles with flatbeds or sidecars and, of course, lots of pedestrians. And the flow of traffic is a thing to behold. There are lines on the roads but one guide mentioned that the Chinese just view them as decorations! And it's hard to tell if there are really any rules. There are some traffic signals and round-abouts but vehicles don't always mind them and pedestrians seem to cross the road wherever and whenever they want (or when they can!) And of course, every where we were there were tour buses which could squeeze into the most startling places and openings in traffic to move us smoothly from one place to another. The remarkable thing is it all seems to work!! We saw the aftermath of only one fender bender the entire time. Tom often referred to it as the Zen of driving.