[See Part-1 at: 2010 Inner Mongolia and Central China Trip (Part-1) ]
On May 14, we arrived at Qi Xian (祁縣 ) and visited the Qiao Jia Da Yuan (喬家大院.).
This large housing compound was made famous and became a popular tourist spot because of the awarded movie, “The Red Lanterns” (大紅燈籠高高掛) directed by Zhang Yimou (張藝謀) and acted by Gong Li.(龔俐). It was also the house of Qiao Zhiyong, (喬致庸) who was the main character in a well-made TV series, “Qiao Jia Da Yuan.” The enormous crowds there showed how a movie or TV series could change the fortune of a place for good. The people selling souvenirs were all over this small town.
That afternoon we arrived at a walled city called Pingyao. (平遙) This 2700 years old ancient city had also become an UNESCO World Heritage sit
The hotel we stayed there was called Yunjingcheng (雲錦成), which was a 5 star hotel, built like an ancient house as shown in the following photo. Our room was at the lower right corner
We all got fascinated by it and visited each other’s room and saw what were the arrangements in each unit. Ing-wu and Han-yueh had the luck of getting to stay in a two-stories suite. The bed was like in the old days.
The intact city wall was more than 6+ kilometers in length. We walked about the length of ¼ of it. Compared to Hongcun ( 宏村 ) in Anhui Province (安徽省) that place of UNESCO World Heritage site was more attractive than Pingyao in my view but granted that it was not as ancient as Pingyao. We also toured an old type Bank called Ri Sheng-Chan. (日升昌). The dinner was provided at a restaurant ran by the hotel but at a different part of the town. We had to sit on the wooden chairs (板凳 ) like in the old days. As we took walk on the streets at night, I was solicited to have a 45 minutes foot massage for merely $4.7. Added with 10 minutes backrub, the total cost was $5.85. The living cost in this small town was definitely lower. That massage parlor had good business that night as many people from our group went for it.
On May 15, we drove to Jing Shen (靜升) and visited the Wang’s big housing compound. (王家大院)
Then we went to a new tourist site called Mian Shan. (綿山) This was on one of the attachments that our classmate Maw-song Huang sent us. It was a very hazy day. Despite the natural beauty of the valley, the place was too artificially altered and commercialized with too many tourists.
It was one place I recommended to the tour organizer and the travel agency. It turned out to be a disappointment for some. That evening we arrived at Lingfen (臨汾.) The following photo was a typical scenery of the Yellow Dirt Plateau (黃土高原) of Central China . 
This area is very short of water resources. Great efforts in forestation could be seen from the tour bus.
On May 16, we visited the Yao Temple (堯廟).
It was first built in Jing Dynasty (晉) and it worshipped the legendary emperor of Yao. (堯帝) Then we headed west to the narrowest point of the Yellow River ( 黃河 ) to view the yellow color Hukou Falls. (壺口瀑布.)
The Yellow River came to this narrow gap of about 50 meters and dropped 30 meters. The opposite shore was Shaanxi Province . It was said that one time the white building on the Shaanxi side even got flooded.
The drive to this Hukou Falls took us more than four hours but the remaining trip to the next destination Yuncheng ( 運城.) took even longer. The drive was much prolonged by a traffic accident immediately ahead of us and the rain and the thick fog on mountain road toward Yuncheng slowed us down. But this experience allowed us to witness first hand how the Chinese traffic authority, insurance company and tow truck operated to get the traffic in order. It took about two hours to clear the road. We arrived there at midnight.
The travel agency did a quick job in arranging this large contingent to have meal almost at mid-night as the originally reserved restaurant was closed for the night. Yuencheng was the birth place of Guan Yu, (關羽) the famous warrior in the era of the three kingdoms, who had risen to the status of deity in Chinese society. Now it looked like a fairly large city a shown in the photo above.
On May 17, we drove three and half hours to Louyang, ( 洛陽.) the capital of many ancient Dynasties. Such as, in 2070 B.C., the Xia Dynasty built the capital here. The Northern Wei Dynasty ( 北魏 ) and several different Dynasties used it as the capital. We first visited Guan Lin (關林), where it was said that Guan Yu’s head and belongings were buried.
In the temple, there stood a supposed to be the replica of his Blue Dragon Suppressing the Moon Sword” ( 青龍偃月刀) on a stand.
It weighed 42 kilograms. I could probably lift it with both hands but with great difficulty. As to slashing it around, forget it!
Then we visited another UNESCO World Heritage site, the Longmeng Grottoes ( 龍門石窟) thirteen kilometers south of Luoyang.
It was situated at the Western Mountain (西山 ) along the Yi River (伊水) facing the opposite shore of Xiang Mountain (香山). These grottoes were started to be built in 494 A.D. Most Buddhist sculptures were either destroyed of gauged out over the years. The most undamaged parts were the largest sculpture group in the open. The image of the Buddha was said to have fashioned after the empress Wu Zetian (武則天.)
It was quite beautiful and was said to be the most beautiful Buddha’s sculpture in China with more Chinese artistic characters.
On May 18, we visited the Zhou Emperor Six Horses Carriage (周天子駕六博物館 ) site of 2700 years ago in the middle of Luoyang. There was a museum built on top of the unearthed 26 carriages with various numbers of horses for each carriage. The emperor’s carriage was found to have the remains of six horses as the legend said.
We then went to Dengfeng (登封.) where Shao Lin Temple (少林寺 ) was located in the woods at the foothills of Shao Shi Mountain ( 少室山). Thus, the temple was named Shao Lin.
The entire area had become a very popular tourists site and it had become very commercialized. In fact, the Shao Lin Temple was incorporated and had become more or less a business entity. The ancient gingko trees inside the temple gate showed the holes by those martial monks practicing their strengths of fingers over the years.
In Dengfeng, there were 20,000 to 40,000 youths in various martial art schools receiving mostly martial art training. Kids about the age of 6 or 7 performed their martial arts skills with impressive precision. For the 2008 Olympic Games opening ceremony, they could easily recruit thousands of youths performed martial art with expertise.
We were shown by a group of young Shaolin martial artists of their skills. There must be several teams of such martial artists from here touring the world and making money for the temple. I noticed that the monks here did not have their incense burning marks on their heads I remember seeing in Taiwan . It was said that they no longer practiced that custom as it was viewed as a form of “unnecessary torture.” I wonder whether this was a twist of the Communist way of viewing the “human rights.” Some people went to see the show directed by Zhang Yi-mou that night but we opted to rest early and arrived in Zhengzhou (鄭州,) the capital of Henan Province ( 河南省), which took two hours. The photo of Zhengzhou is shown below.
On May 19, we went to tour the Henan Museum.
It was mainly established to house an exquisite rectangular bronze pot with lotus petal cover and crane decorations. (蓮鶴方壺) of the Spring and Autumn (春秋) era around 770 B.C. to 476 B.C.
The unearthed bronze artifact collections at this museum were very impressive. This particular pot was their most treasured piece. Considering this entire area was the cradle of Chinese civilization, I could see that they could dig up some valuable stuffs.
Then we drove through 10-lane highway to the ancient capital city, Kaifeng (開封.)
Along this highway, just like many other cities, there were not only trees but also well trimmed flowers and shrubberies along the street. It showed that there must have plenty of cheap labors available. Despite its fame as an ancient capital, there were relatively few ancient sites left in the city. We visited the Iron Tower (鐵塔.) first built in 1049 .
A.D. by lumbers. But with many incidents and disasters in the past, it was rebuilt with porcelain exterior, which looked the color of iron. Thus, it was called the “ Iron Tower .” We also visited a couple of other less significant places. The replica of the Kaifeng Fu (開封府) we visited just did not raise much interests from us. I guess that after seeing so many ancient sites, the modern replicas of the ancient things did not impress us anymore. Kaifeng looked less developed than some other cities we had visited. With so many historical relics underground, the strict building codes probably had hampered its development. We could have returned to the hotel in Zhengzhou that evening but the travel agency put us up in yet another hotel in Kaifeng . Behind our hotel, there were newly built buildings resembled the buildings in the famous scroll “Along the River During the Ching-ming Festival.“ ( 清明上河圖 .)
On May 20, we drove back toward Zhengzhou . Near Mang Mountain (邙山) next to the Yellow River, we rode on a hydrofoil boat to cruise the Yellow River.
We saw the tower marking the point where the Lower Section of the River begun. While riding on the boat, I was surprised to see a pheasant on the shore. We also saw the recently built giant heads of the two brothers Yen Di and Huan Di (炎帝,黃帝), who were considered to be the ancestors of all Chinese nationals.
That evening we concluded the tour. On the following day, the group was split into three sub-groups, one to Shanghai for the EXPO, one to Xian as the original tour plan arranged, and we returned back to Beijing . When we arrived in Beijing, the China Travel arranged a lunch at the Bai Jia Da Yuan Restaurant (白家大院) to get a taste of being in the Qing Court. The service was pretty nice but the food was so so. The photo showed the waiters and waitresses were given the briefing for their shift.
The typical greeting there was “Fortune to you!” (您吉祥) The guide even took us to tour an ancient Hu Tong on a pedicap. These Hutongs were kept because some big shots were living there. Most have been destroyed for the progress sake. It became very expensive to own a house in these Hutongs nowadays. It could cost tens of millions for a ancient house. We were all worn out by that time and demanded the tour guide to take us to the hotel to rest and not to a famous discount market for shopping.
On this tour, many people had gotten sick as usual. Many developed coughs and we were not exempted. Mia’s cough lasted more than three weeks. I also coughed for a couple of days. However, we were fortunate not to be affected by stomach flu, which many had suffered.
We stayed on in Beijing for another four days. We visited the Shiushui Market( 秀水市場 ), Ya-shiu Market (雅秀市場) and Dong Jiao Market ( 東郊市場.). We did some shopping. We also made a terrible mistake of visiting the Forbidden City on a Sunday. It was people mountain people sea, probably like at the EXPO. On that hot sunny day, we found it was rather tiring to walk around. We ducked into the exhibition halls for china and porcelain. It was visited by few. Finding a taxi near the Tiananmen Square was almost impossible. We also got a chance to visit the Capital Museum . The building was huge but the collections were so so. The following photo was the new museum.
We had visited Beijing in the year 2000. The rapid progress and great transformation I saw this time could only be described as “ impressive.” The 2008 Olympic Games served as a tremendous impetus for China to exert great efforts in transforming the capital city into a modern show case. They were able to afford such expenses. Some Beijing taxi drivers even commented on their delights in seeing blue sky in many years since the government had forcefully gotten rid of the factories in the city. But the cars were increasing in numbers and they clogged the streets. The following photo was the street scene of Beijing .
The progress made was probably not just what met the eyes. It seemed to be comprehensive in many respects. While riding on subway, I was given a seat by young men or women about 80% of the time. My gray hairs did have its advantage.
However, we saw many high rise apartments and office buildings in Beijing and many lesser cities and many were still under constructions. On the roads, we saw more highways, bridges, and rapid train tracks being built. In tourist sites, many new constructions were continuing and restrooms improved. I even heard a new airport was being planned in Beijing when it had a newly built sleek airport for the 2008 Olympic games. In short, the constructions were still in high pitch. Checking into the costs of each square meter of housing at different cities, (For example, In Zhengzhou, the nicer condo could fetch 8,000 Yuen but in Beijing , it is asking for 60,000 Yuen or more per square meter.) I could not help but questioned whether the majority of the people could afford such expensive housing considering their rather meager incomes. I also wondered at the occupancy rate of those plush looking office buildings. Had they overbuilt? Was the economy getting into a bubble? Would the bubble burst some day?
China is definitely enjoying its unprecedented prosperity, however would it be able to sustain such growth in the globalization of the world economy, the unpredictable climate changes impacting on its farm productions, the environmental deteriorations in the making, and potential geographical problems (For example, the safety of the Three Gorges Dam,) which could impact heavily on their safety and economy. That said, I have been greatly impressed with China ’s ability in completing several big projects based on their ‘X years’ plans” through its wise strategic planning and effective implementation. For example, they had timely accomplished their space explorations, successfully accomplished the thorny challenges of 2008 Olympic games, and opened 2010 Shanghai Expo on time. However, I somewhat doubt that without correcting the widening gap between the rich and the poor and eradicating the rampant corruptions by the powerful officials and well connected, it will be a smooth sailing from now on. If they succeeded in maintaining their stability, continuing the economic growth, increasing initiative of the massive labor force- the most commonly heard criticism of Chinese workers,) gobbling up the world resources, generating more electric power (It is said that in 2012, it will surpass the U.S. in electricity generation), attracting more investments from overseas, investing wisely into those countries in poor economy shape for nice bargains, modernizing their military strengths, strengthening their IT capability, and collecting widely useful and sensitive intelligence worldwide, who knows? China could well enjoy this Century as the Century of China.
[The End]
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