Hello and Goodbye

Atop the inner city wall of Xi'an

Thursday

As promised, in Chongqing (pronounced Chong-ching) we literally walked from the ship to the bus and then were driven straight to the airport. Well, it wasn't THAT easy. We sailed up river all night in pea soup fog as opposed to the usual grey mist. We tied to another pontoon dock and as the fog lifted to a thick grey mist, we discovered we were two pontoon boat docks and about 100 yards of floating pathways from The (inevitable) Steps.

The "bang bangs" are porters who look like they're anything from 20 to 100 years old. They put a heavy bamboo pole behind their neck and over their shoulders and then hang baskets, bags or whatever from the end of each pole and start walking or climbing. They schlepped our big checked bags across the floating pathway and then up the 100+ cement stairs to the baggage bus. We each grabbed our carry on and followed suit. By the time I reached the top of that endless flight of stairs I was sucking wind and wishing Mr. Otis had made his way to the exotic East to teach them about the elevator.

This was taken about 8 AM just before we left the ship.  We had to walk across the pontoon path and then up the flight of stairs to the bus.  This is about as bright as it gets in this city.

Chongqing is monstrous, or what we could see of it. Imagine a San Francisco built entirely of 30+ story buildings; hundreds and thousands of them. The visibility was maybe a mile. Maybe. The combination of humidity along the river, pollution and 32 or 33 million people makes for air you can chew and no sun. Kevin told us that girls from Chongqing are thought to be the most beautiful in China because they're never in the sun and thus their skin is like porcelain. It might make for lovely skin but this gloom is not so good for those of us of Scandinavian descent who are always looking into the
abyss.

We took a one hour flight to Xi'an and then walked and walked and walked through the endless and wide and empty concourse to baggage claim. Chinese airports are enormous and as far as I could tell, underused. And in every city they seem to be building more terminals. The international side of the airport at Beijing (as a opposed to the domestic side) has three HUGE terminals, A, B and C. However, only A and C are used. B was strictly for the athletes to use during the Olympics and was closed after the Games.

The afternoon was spent at the Han dynasty tomb and museum. The emperors built entire cities in their tombs for their afterlife. These underground cities have mountains and lakes, armies and animals, chariots and wagons. The figures in the Han dynasty tomb are small, a bit smaller than half life size. These tombs look like hills from afar. The tomb was excavated (they are referred to as pits), everything put in a series of rooms and then completely covered with earth. There has been a good bit of tomb raiding and destroying when enemies attacked or the peasants revolted, but hundreds of the terra cotta  figures have survived. Xi'an was the capital of China for hundreds of years and many dynasties so a lot of emperors' tombs are in the area which is now farmland. The famous Terra Cotta Warriors were not discovered until a farmer was digging a well in 1974 and hit antiquities instead of water.

Besides the historical center of China, Xi'an is also the dumpling capital of China. Dinner that night was a feast that featured 20 different types of dumplings, all about bite-size. Vegetable, pork, chicken, fish, shrimp, abalone and even a couple of sweet ones. The dumplings are shaped to look like the ingredient inside: ducks, pigs, fish, etc. All are steamed and just delicious. And as at every meal so far, slices of watermelon for dessert.

Street traffic in Xi'an

Xi'an "only" has four million people but it is bustling. We're starting to look forward to our bus rides here and there if only to watch the bicycles, scooters, cars, buses and pedestrians jockey for position on the roads. It seems that the biggest has the right of way, but that doesn't mean the smaller vehicles won't challenge this law of the pavement jungle! The drivers change lanes at will and without warning and will straddle the white line to get "there" first. Pedestrians will cross multi-laned roads at corners, in the middle of a block, wherever, dodging the cars and buses and scooters that do NOT stop for them. And the roundabouts are an E ticket ride at Disneyland! The centers are beautifully landscaped with trees and flowers, and the cars treat the road like a race track. No one stays in his or her lane. They all want to be closest to the center and then they cut wildly across traffic to drive on another street. And then there is always a pedestrian or scooter or delivery bike (a three wheeled bike with a flatbed over the back wheel for freight) going against traffic to liven it up a bit. And seat belts or helmets? Fuggetaboudit.

We're staying at the Shangri La Golden Flower Hotel. It's lovely, the staff is gracious and the rooms are huge. Our local guide, this itty bitty creature named Coco, has told us that it was built on the site of a palace an emperor built for his favorite concubine, the Golden Flower. The emperors each had one wife but hundreds of concubines. They were forever building palaces for the latter. The empresses knew what was going on but that didn't mean they were going to tolerate having these women in THEIR palace. There are endless stories of the craftier concubines bribing the eunuchs who guarded them to put them at the top of the emperor's list. There are eunuchs among the clay figures in the tombs. All the figures were once clothed in silk robes which have rotted away. As Coco put it, you can identify the eunuchs because "they don't have parts down there." Like a big ole pile of Ken dolls!

Tomorrow the big event.