As some of the WC regulars have noted, I am back from my travels. I spent about 18 days in China all told, divided among Shanghai, Xian, and Jiuzhaigou National Park in Szechuan province. I’m still sorting through my pics but will post some of them in a Windows Live album or Flickr or something and link it here later. Here is a quick rundown of my adventures.

Shanghai – Expo 2010

The big event in Shanghai (and, indeed, China) this year is Expo 2010. It’s a massive, sprawling beast of a World’s Fair that pretty has its own green transit system (1 subway line and several lines running hybrid buses). Even with all that, there’s a crapload of walking needed to see things. We pretty much dodged the popular pavilions (China, Saudi Arabia) because of the line-ups (7-9 hours for the Saudis). However, we did get to see some interesting pavilions. Canada’s was technically quite well done although we felt that it didn’t really say much about Canada to a non-Canadian. The US was dull – three movies and some exhibits from corporate sponsors. Very corporate, very American. Some of our favorites, in fact, ended up being smaller African countries. Angola did a bang-up job of selling their country (even if they did completely gloss over their problems) as did Morocco. From Europe, Spain had an interesting pavilion, even if the famous giant baby (seen on The Rick Mercer Report when he went to Shanghai for his season opener) is a bit silly and overblown. Thailand took a similar approach to the USA but did it right and ended up with a very nice pavilion including a 4D movie narrated by a robot version of a classical Thai statue. Overall, I’d say Expo was big and often interesting but kind of overblown. Haven’t been to any other Expos (including the two Canada has hosted) so I don’t if this one is typical or not.

On the last day before we went travelling, my son and I went down to the Bund. For those unfamiliar with Shanghai, the city is in two parts separated by the Huangpu River. The original city is on the west bank of the river and is called Puxi (West River, more or less) while the modern part of the city (dating back only about 20-25 years) is on the east bank and is called Pudong (East River). The Bund is a clutch of 19^th and 20^th century European buildings along the river in Puxi. They were built during the time when Shanghai was a treaty port more or less controlled by various colonial powers (the US, Britain, France, and Japan). From the Bund, you get a great view of the new skyline in Pudong. Pudong has gone from farmland 23 years ago (when my wife left Shanghai for the Great White North) to a gleaming modern business centre that makes Bay Street look shabby by comparison. One interesting new feature that caught my eye was a Canadian flag on the Peace Hotel. This is the grande dame of Shanghai hotels and hosted Noel Coward and other luminaries during the heyday of the treaty port. My wife and I stayed there for part of a visit in 1995. Little Mendalla checked into it later and we found that it is now run by the Fairmont chain, who also run the Chateau Lake Louise, Banff Springs, and other former CP hotels in Canada. I’m still not sure if having the Peace in Canadian hands is good or bad, but at least it’s a chain that’s used to running historic hotels.

Xian

The first thing we noticed in Xian was the haze. Maximum visibility, even on the best day we were there, was probably a km. While Shanghai has actually cleaned up its air quality quite a bit, Xian’s air is a cesspool and my sinuses did not like it. That said, it is one of the oldest cities in China (it was the capital from the 3^rd century BCE to c. 14^th century CE with some breaks along the way) so has a ton of interesting historical sites and is well worth some time. Best known is the clay army (some of which are at the Royal Ontario Museum right now), which is actually one small part of the massive tomb of Emperor Qin Shi Huang, the man who united China in 220 BCE to create the first dynasty of the Chinese empire. There are three pits open to the public along with a museum. A fourth pit remains closed because they’ve discovered that the paint on the soldiers in that one is intact and they are waiting to open it up until they can figure out how to protect the paint from exporsure to the air. In addition to the Qin tomb, there is the largest intact city wall in Asia (current wall dates to the Ming dynasty), tombs of various other dynasties, and some restored palaces. One of my favorite spots is Big Goose Pagoda and its associated Buddhist temple. The pagoda and temple were originally built in the Tang Dynasty to house Buddhist scriptures brought from India by the monk Xuanzong, whose exploits are the basis for the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West.

Jiuzhaigou National Park

Jiuzhaigou is China’s Banff, more or less. A long valley in the mountains of Szechuan province, it rises from about 2000m above sea level at the gate to a hair over 3000m at the two highest points. It is packed with scenic vistas of waterfalls, lakes, mountains and forests (including a lovely old growth forest on a mountain side). To my delight, the Chinese have carefully controlled development in the park. All hotels are outside the park along the highway that provides access. No vehicles are allowed inside except for park vehicles (which includes sightseeing buses). The name Jiuzhaigou literally means “Nine Villages Valley”, a reference to nine settlements of ethnic Tibetans in the valley. They are still allowed to live there, but can’t farm it anymore so receive compensation from the park’s revenues (about $25K-30K in our dollars per person per year). The surrounding area is also heavily Tibetan and many of them make money by renting their property to Han Chinese merchants who run restaurants and stores to service the tourist trade. Among other things, this meant I got my first taste of yak (and it’s quite good, though not as much like beef as I thought it would be). Oh yeah, we found a great little eatery in a village beside our hotel which served local cuisine (and, yes, North American Szechuan food is nothing next to the real thing). We did not partake of the freshly killed goats that were hanging on spits outside many of the restaurants, but it was interesting to see freshly killed meat being displayed so openly. Jiuzhaigou was my favorite stop on this trip, hands down.

Downside: I had a bad dose of altitude sickness that left me with a wicked little headache for the first couple days (and, damn it, we only stayed for 3 days). Does not bode well for my desire to visit Tibet (4000+ m above sea level) on a future trip to China.

Back to Shanghai

After our return to Shanghai, we did a lot of family stuff with my wife’s clan. A couple birthday parties and that sort of thing. Little Mendalla got his regular visit to Shanghai’s beautiful Science and Technology Museum (what the Ontario Science Centre should, and could,be if someone poured in the necessary cash and talent) and I got to spend some time (not enough) in the Shanghai Museum, a wonderful art and cultural museum on Shanghai’s People’s Square. People’s Square itself has changed radically since I first saw it. It used to be a smaller version of Beijing’s Tiananmen Square – just a big open space surrounded by official buildings. Now it’s been redone as a modern city square with landscaping, fountains, and so on and it looks mahvellous. Another sign of Shanghai’s ongoing evolution as a city.

So, that’s what I’ve been up to for the last couple weeks.

Zai jian,

Mendalla

Comments

Rev. Steven Davis

Posted on: 11/03/2010 22:16

Thanks for sharing your experiences. When we were in China in 2005 to adopt our daughter we spent our time in Beijing and Changsha, Hunan. I would have liked to have visited Shanghai but it wasn't on the table. We've talked about going back with Hannah in a few years, when she's old enough to really take it in, and Shanghai would be on the agenda, probably in place of Beijing. We've also thought about stopping in either Tokyo or Taipei, but that's beside the point.

I enjoyed Changsha immensely. It doesn't have the modern feel of Beijing (or Shanghai) but there was something very impressive about it. Of course, it could just be that Changsha is where we met our daughter! Beijing disappointed a bit. Some parts very modern, some very rundown. There's a lot to do but it has a very antiseptic, and in some ways Western, feel to it. No matter where we went in China, the traffic was terrifying!

Posted on: 11/04/2010 09:29

Ah, you went to Beijing 3 years too early, amigo. They cleaned it up beautifully for the Olympics (we were last there in November 2008, 3 months after the games). Shanghai is less of a mixed bag largely because it is quite young by Chinese standards. Prior to the arrival of the colonials and establishment of the treaty port (at gunpoint, natch) it was pretty much a minor port. It wasn't until its heyday in the 20s that it was rivalling Hong Kong as the pre-eminent trading centre on the Chinese coast. As mentioned above, Pudong is pretty much all new and Puxi has been heavily overhauled. It's well worth a visit. Spots to see are the Shanghai Museum in People's Square, Yuyuan (a Ming dynasty Chinese garden surrounded by a shopping district built in classical Chinese style) and the abovementioned Bund. A trip to the top of either Jinmao or the World Financial Centre (the two tallest skyscrapers in mainland China) can be fun, too, esp. for kids.

My travels in China

Posted on: 11/03/2010 21:11