It has been an interesting, enlightening, and entertaining month in China. The first 18 days were doing a private tour organized through Wendy Wu Tours, with the final 10 days being at a house sit in the city of Qingdao looking after three dogs and three cats.
Our three main guides, Sean, Cassie, and Bruce were knowledgable, personable, and professional. As well, Maria, on board the Victoria Jenna, took very good care of us. Though doing a private tour is certainly a bit more expensive, I would be lying if I said we didn’t enjoy having our own driver and guide to show us the sights and bypass any large groups that were moving slowly.
I love history, but both Karen and I have a very limited ability to enjoy museums. As well our lifestyle does not allow for collecting trinkets and souvenirs so we try to focus on sights, smells, and people in our travels. China is a treasure trove for these types of experiences.
The scope and challenges of ancient people constructing things like the Grand Buddha at Leshan are an example of that.It is when you look closer at these feats the size truly strikes you. The size of the tourists walking by helps you understand. How did they cope with the challenges of carving this over 1200 years ago?
The people, oh the people. With a population of 1.4 billion people (18% of the worlds population) they are everywhere. However I will qualify that with the statement that we never felt we were in a crush of people as we have experienced in many other countries. The public have learned to just move forward. With both walking and driving it is vital not to worry about what is behind you. We never once saw anyone get upset about being cutoff. Just keep moving forward.
Industry is another big thing. Though most heavy industry has been moved west into the less populated areas of the country. We saw plenty as we did our train trips. When I say less populated that is a relative term. All big industrial sites we saw were accompanied by small cities of 1 to 7 million people.Oh, and street food. No lack of visual displays of what is available for your palette. Think seafood here.The amount of pork we saw for sale on Muslim Street left me scratching my head. I am sure there is more to it, but getting an answer was problematic.
The majority of tourists we encountered were from China, but it doesn’t matter the nationality, children have a way of involving themselves in whatever is going on.Police and security presence was everywhere we travelled. The only piece of equipment we consistently saw were these poles. I assume they are for some type of crowd control. Most of the time the police were answering questions from passersby.We saw this fellow working at the Beijing train station when we were heading to Qingdao. So cute and well behaved. Unfortunately we never got to see him indicate on anyone. I would have been curious how that would have gone down.Another interesting experience is toilets. Squat toilets are the norm, however we found the solution is finding a handicap stall. There usually was a Western toilet in them. This public restroom took the term “public” to a new level. This was the ladies restroom.On the other end of the scale were places like the National Centre for the Performing Arts. An absolutely modern, beautiful facility for supporting the performing arts. We went and walked around inside, jaw dropping.One of the public areas in the Performing Arts Centre. It was a photographers dream wandering through here.
I mentioned our last 10 days were house sitting in Qingdao, a port city with a population of around 6 million. It was a very quiet time resting and catching up on writing and organizing photos.
We were fortunate to have perfect weather while we were touring China. When we got to Qingdao it all balanced out. Nearly every day was heavy fog and temperatures in the low to mid teens.Our best find in Qingdao was this bakery. They served excellent coffee and the baking, oh the baking. Suffice to say we went here every morning for coffee and a little something.The fog along the promenade at night was pretty cool.
We did enjoy some cool clear days. This is the view from the back of our apartment.On our last morning we were treated to a quintessential Chinese scene. A lady in the complex courtyard practicing Tai Chi. It was quite beautiful to watch.
China is a country that holds strong feelings for many people. The advantage of our house sitting life styles is that when the opportunity presented itself to experience it first hand, we were able to do it. Because of that we are better informed, more rounded individuals. We highly recommend the experience to others.
Very interesting as always
Thank you.