Shanghai and Guilin
After the Yangtze trip we shimmied down to
old Shanghai. First stop the
elegant Museum and a trip around a fascinating collection of paintings,
furniture, old money, porcelain, early BC bronze artifacts, jades and
jewellery. Porcelain from the Ming and
Qing Dynasties looked as fresh and perfect as when it was made – any time
around 1644. We were so impressed with
the sheer mastery of working with clay and glazes combining them into elegant,
understated beautiful objects.
Shanghai is the nearest to
Singapore we saw in China. A population
of 13 Million lives in this city of huge coloured skyscrapers of various shapes
and heights. Everywhere evidence of the
old, poor housing being torn down and replaced by high-rise flats and shopping
malls. More green spaces and flowers,
less bicycles, lively crowds and if you had to work there … the best jobs must
be in construction! Shanghai has been
an important port for centuries and along the waterfront Bund sit large, heavy,
solid, classical buildings erected in the early 1900’s by various countries
holding trading concessions with China.
On the other side of the river looms the Oriental pearl Telecom Tower in
all its garish grossness (11 pearls!) and innumerable other new skyscrapers
indubitably of the 21st Century.
Religion was banned during he Cultural
Revolution but now a sense of freedom pervades. In the Temple of the two Jade Buddha we were told they had
escaped destruction by the Red Guard by being packed into wooden crates
decorated on the outside with pictures of Mao Zedong! The Temple was crowded with local people intent on personal
prayer, lighting incense sticks in the huge black metal troughs, wedging money
into cracks and crevices of the various Buddha tableaux and generally milling
about. The air was heavy with smells,
the paths were crowded with people and there was a group of women carefully
folding gold paper into lotus shapes, apparently for burning in some ceremony
later. It was a living temple and not
just a tourist attraction. I found it a
stimulating experience but Mrs PC told the Guide that she “had felt embarrassed intruding on peoples’
prayer” All a question of
perspective! (You can be sure that I
took an opportunity to tell the Guide, in Mrs PC’s hearing, how I felt about
the visit!)
Another visit in Shanghai was to the Yu
Gardens. Not at all what you expect
with an English background! It was
reached by a zigzag bridge over a large pond with a traditional Tea House in
the middle. There were actually 15
zigzags but it was called the ‘9 Zigzag Bridge’ as 9 is a more auspicious
number! The Gardens are a mix of
greenery, walkways, typical Chinese summerhouses, symbolically shaped stones and
tourist shops! But it was so different
from bustling, busy Shanghai – peaceful – well, it would have been but for the
other visitors!
Right outside the Yu Gardens are the most
wonderful street stalls and shops selling everything from art materials to
watches. Here was a place to bargain
and I loved it! Tables of watches have always been my delight
– and here were Lolex, Clartier, Longines, Lado and all the others with the
sellers ready to whip out the latest catalogues to show how good their copies
were. I fell instantly in love with a
classic Longines and haggled with great gusto, meanwhile attracting a small,
fascinated crowd, until we reached agreement on an extravagant £4.00! Having got an idea of how low to start, I then bought
a ‘silver’ Rolex - Oyster Perpetual for £3.00 and an evening Rolex for Phyllis
for £5.00! (The starting price was
around £11.50!) Brian was keen to get
two watches: a black and gold Rado, as Mrs PC had one, which she just had to
make sure we knew was a real and expensive one, and a watch with a picture of
Mao on the front, his arm continually waving in salute. But his bargaining skills are too pathetic,
he pitches his first offer so high the stunned sellers offer him “two for that
price, Sir!”
With no time left to go back to the Hotel
to change, (much to Mrs PC’s revulsion!) we had an unmemorable meal before
attending an acrobatic show. Delightful
and exhilarating to watch the sheer agility and enthusiasm of the tumblers,
balancers, acrobats, contortionists, plate-spinners, magician and the roaring
finale of a massive wire ball with three motorcyclists zooming round inside
with heart-stopping accuracy. The bus
driver took us back to our Hotel the ‘long way’ and we drove along The Bund
with its bright street lamps and golden lights on the staid old colonial
buildings, contrasting with the varied shapes and brash colours of the
high-rise 21st century Shanghai across the river. A magical way to finish the evening.
Another flight, this time to Guilin. All the internal flights have been on time,
clean, efficient – most impressive.
Guilin greeted us with high humidity and a day temperature of about 40°C. It is surprisingly green in Guilin, plenty of trees, bamboo
stands, planted flowerbeds and attractive walks along the Li River where little
humpy bridges criss-cross the streams and but for the heat, it’s all very
lovely. Small bamboo and wooden craft
sit patiently waiting for passengers to sit idly in wooden deckchairs and be
punted down the river. A couple of
cormorants sat idly by the water and flopped in to keep cool while patiently
waiting their turn to show off superior fishing skills. All very relaxing.
Not only is this hot day country, this is
hot food country. Here in Szechwan most
of the dishes we are offered at meal times do a good job of nose-clearing,
eye-watering and vicious throat paring!
They look and smell good, but we all develop delicate portion
taking!
Our local guide had obviously been doing
the same job for a few years so had some well-worn phrases that we were about
to get to know rather well. “Thirty
three thousand, three hundred and thirty three hills and a da mountains!” Guilin is a geologically unique area, full
of visually incredible Karst hills and mountains. “Location, Formation, Imagination” - the Chinese habitually give
imaginative and symbolic names to every hillock: Five-fingers Hill, Dragon-head Hill, Green Lotus Peak,
Penholder Peak, Nine Horses Cliff, Dragons Playing Water, A Boy worships
Buddha, Reflection of Yellow Cloth. We
ran out of imagination. But
they provided inspiration for poets and artists for centuries. We couldn’t appreciate the Chinese poems but
we saw plenty of the dark, weird, unbelievable paintings – and understood
their inspiration.
Included in our visit to hot and
humid Guilin was a day trip on the Li River where ‘The hills are like emerald hairpins And the water is a winding beautiful jade ribbon”
Reader, it was beautiful.
The water was shallow and clear;
the hills were like fairytale peaks, lightening in colour as they faded into
the distance; the surrounding fields were green and fertile; idle water buffalo
looked at us through long lashes; small semi-naked children played in the
shallows, ducks dabbled and sitting prettily along the banks were small
pastoral villages. The problem, if
problem it was to others, was the number of tourists being ferried back and
forth along the jade ribbon. Ours was
one of dozens and dozens of boats honking their presence and full of camera
clicking cruisers. It quite detracted
from the expected dreamy, inspirational and artistic experience. Somehow we’d envisaged gently drifting down
the river on a small Chinese craft without the intrusion of so much
commercialism. How did it develop to
the point where the dining room on the boat was lit by chandeliers?!
In the evening as the light
faded we went back down to the river for the Cormorant Show. Even this
has been commercialized. Yer
pays yer money, yer gets the Show!
This time the boat had been adapted with wooden benches down the sides
and it set off down river accompanied by a fisherman on a bamboo raft with his
5 cormorants. Each bird had a string
around its throat and a string around its foot and as soon as we were moving he
released the leg string and pushed the birds into the water. Zoot, they were gone! We could just about make out the one albino
cormorant as it snaked through the water but gradually our eyes became more
accustomed to the night and the birds began to show their skills. The tightness of the neck string allowed
the birds to swallow tiddlers but as soon as they caught anything biggish the
fisherman unceremoniously hoiked the bird onto the raft, left it there choking
for a while then grabbed it by the neck and reverse-thrust the fish into his
basket. Who’d be a cormorant in
Guilin?!
Who’d be a tiger or a bear either?
On returning to the airport we added in a
visit to the local Tiger and Bear Park. A monstrous entrance flanked by huge painted cement tigers and
bears and a mission statement painted on the wall proclaiming their intention
to raise awareness of animal welfare, preservation and conduct a breeding
programme. Through the entrance was a
wide tree-lined path flanked on one side with a huge acreage of grass, lake and
black bears and on the other huge cages with indolent tigers lying in the grass
under the shade of their trees. Each
of the enclosures had up to three magnificent tigers in them, one of the rare
white tigers was cooling off in his bit of river. There were also breeding cages – we saw an attempted bonk, but
it was too hot for much effort!
Our guide called for us to make haste to an
area where they have a show. A large
round cage with ominous trappings of a circus and tiered seats for the
audience. On came 10 young tigers and
2 young lions. Men cracking whips got
the animals to ‘perform’’ by fear. We
sat with little enthusiasm for the spectacle in front of us – thoughts of
animal dignity and rights never far away.
But it was when we saw that every one of these lovely young animals had
had their canine teeth filed to nothing and the emergence of round red balls
for the tigers to balance on – we quietly wandered away from the stand. Next to the cage was a large oval arena,
the rear of the track hidden by shrubs and plants. Marshalling in the background we could see ostriches, bears, a
camel, horses, water buffalo.
Ominous. The show transferred
to the arena and first a group of young men raced horses around the arena –
without stirrups. Then about twenty
young black bears were paraded around on their hind legs, grotesquely clothed
in dresses and feebly hitting half of a
cymbal tied to their wrists against the other half that was tied around their
middle. Each animal led by strings
through the nose. More parades of animals
– the young tigers, water buffalo, camel and ostrich more bears and all the
while a young Chinese girl was shrieking amplified comments to the
audience.
A tawdry, grotesque exhibition that sat
uneasily in our minds with the ‘mission statement’ on the outside wall. Again, we left discreetly (or not so…)
At the end of the show we were again called
over by our guide, “This will be interesting for you – here they are training
tigers for return to the wild – very interesting.” In a large fenced enclosure a young water buffalo was
investigating his territory, walking up and down and occasionally, realizing
that he was in an enclosure running at the wire fencing. Languidly pacing on the other side of the
fence were 4 adult tigers, they knew what was to come. Sitting on the fence high above the tigers a
keeper opened a gate and released two tigers into the enclosure with the water
buffalo. It didn’t take many strides
before the tigers leaped on the water buffalo, immobilised him and started
tearing at his flesh. We left abruptly,
the cries of the distressed animal haunting our ears for a long while
after.
What was this place?
This wasn’t entertainment.
We walked back towards the entrance past
cages of baby bears and tigers. What
future for them?
On the way to the coach we passed two more
enchanting little diversions for the public:
1.
Dangle a piece of apple on a fishing line – to feed (or is it tease) the
bears.
2.
Dangle a live frog, tied by one back leg, on the end of a fishing rod line
to make the alligators snap!
We’d seen enough! It was time to fly home.
But I don’t want to leave that as the last
impression of China. It is but one facet of a huge, varied, cultured, beautiful
and fascinating country.
Previous page Return to main
page