Day 88 (2 September): Old City

We spent the entire day today within the city walls of Pingyao which is a well-preserved city where most buildings date back about 300 years and the city walls about 700 years. With the number of exhibits on its history and museums around, it is clearly set up as a tourist attraction for Chinese and international visitor alike, but nonetheless well done.

We toured the city walls, the Rishengchang Bank (which was China's first bank), the Mingqing business street and its shops, the former governor's mansion, an old court, and a warrior/kung fu museum.

1) Colonial Williamsburg. With the way Pingyao is set up with in the city walls, it seems in many ways like Colonial Williamsburg. Cars are not allowed in and some people are dressed in costumes from 300 years ago pulling around rickshaws, which no longer happens.
2) The environment again. A manufacturing plant of some sort within the city walls was shut down to help preserve the city and reduce pollution. Again, someone is paying attention to these issues as China develops.
3) Eating fat. This still seems to be a common practice in Shanxi as we were offered plates of fat chunks in gravy at lunch for a second time today. It seems that it must be remnant of a poorer time as people at least look like they should be able to eat something else.

Day 87 (1 September): Road to Pingyao

Today we drove from Taiyuan--China's center for coal mining--to the preserved historic town of Pingyao. Along the way we stopped at a number of sites including 1) the Jin Family Ancestral Temple which featured 3000 year old trees growing on its grounds in addition to some impressive lion and warrior sculptures, 2) the Qiao Family Courtyard which was the home 200 years ago of a family that made it rich initally selling Tofu to Mongolians then moving into banking, and 3) the Shuanglin Buddhist Temple, which is one of few Buddhist Temples in China to have survived the Cultural Revolution completely intact, primarily because it isn't near a big city.

Observations:
1) Coal is still big business in China. Around Taiyun its impossible to avoid seeing coal trucks. Maybe this environmental conciousness that the guide in Sichuan was telling us about isn't so accurate.
2) Chinese Wine. That's right made from grapes. We passed a number of vineyards on the way to Pingyao, so watch out, pretty soon everyone might be drinking 'Great Wall' Wine if the quality pans out and people begin importing it elsewhere. Not sure it'll be good, but with farm labor as cheap as it is here, it'll be cheap.
3) Shanxi seems noticably poorer than anywhere else we've been on this trip. Around major tourist sites there are people who are somewhat desperately peddaling cheap goods. Its still nothing like in Inida, however, as they aren't simply begging for money.
4) Government Housing. The nicest buildings going up in Taiyuan were new government apartments according to our guide. They looked nice from what we could see when other apartments around didn't look so great. Doesn't seem like a recipe for making people happy.
5) Most of the road in Shanxi aren't great either and are being patched up here and there rather than being systematically repaved. The major highways even have farm traffic on them.

Day 86 (31 August): Pandas

This morning we went to the Chengdu Panda Reserve which is the largest in the world and watched a number of Pandas wander about.

In the afternoon, we went to th Junjiangyan Irrigation System site. The Irrigation System is a 2200 year old project designed to divert water from one of the rivers to allow crops to grow better on the Sichuan plains.

In the evening we flew to Taiyuan in Shanxi Province which is further North and several hundred kilometers west of Beijing.

Observations:
1) Plastic Surgery Ads. This is another sign of disposable income and people being willing to spend it.
2) Cars again. So the cars look nice, but on closer inspection a number of them have smaller engines than the US versions of the same. For example the badges on the Audi A6 often say it has a 1.8 Liter Turbo Engine in it which goes in an A4 in the US. The same is true for the A8, it has badges with the A6 engines instead of the larger A8 engines. Also none of them seem to have Quattro; e.g. they're not all-wheel-drive which is what most people in the US buy. Nonetheless, without easy access to car loans (I'm assuming they're harder to get in China) buying cars that cost around USD 60,000 and up is a really, really big purchase in a country where per-capita GDP is still around USD2000 annually.
3) Engineering skill. This goes back at least 2200 years in China as the Junjiangyan Irrigation System was the first of its kind in the world as I don't beleive the Romans or Greeks had anything of the level of complexity found here.
4) Infrastructure needs. Despite the nice roads, many are lacking stoplights. We went through an intersection today in Leshan where an eight lane road met a six-lane road with out a stoplight. Somehow traffic seemed to make it through safely as I have yet to see any real accidents.
5) Domestic tourism definitely seems like its on the rise as the Junjiangyan Irrigation System seemed to be on the domestic tourist circut as did some of the other places we've been on this trip. This also may be a function of people in China having more disposable income and finding an outlet for it. Its hard to doubt this is a good thing for development in China.

Day 85 (30 August): Disposable Income in the City

This morning we stayed in the Mt. Emei area and saw the Myriad Years Monastary after taking a bus ride up the mountain followed by an ariel cable car ride. After taking the bus down we head to Leshan where we saw the Giant Leshan Buddha--the world's largest Buddha carved into a sandstone cliff by a river.

Following that we returned to Chengdu where we walked through an old street that had been revitalized into an 'Old Town Chengdu' type neighborhood. While in that neighborhood we went to a 'tea house' performance of Sichuan Opera which included puppet shows, fire breathing dancers, and the like.

Observations:
1) Farm subsidies. According to our guide (reliability somewhat questionable) starting next year there will be subsides for all farmers in China which she says make up 90% of the population. If this is true, this is big news. Perhaps the government in Beijing is trying to keep down protests about how people in cities are making more money. This also seems to have implications for WTO and other types of trade agreements as if China begins subsidizing farmers directly then they can't complain as much about other countries doing the same. Of course this could also be done in some more round-about type of way, such as not taxing farmers rather than actively subsidizing them.
2) Cars! There seem to be a lot of nice cars around now, much nicer ones than I remember seeing when I was in China 3 years ago. The VW Passat always labeled here as the Shanghai Volkswagon Passat seems to be the most common car on the road and these are new models now, not the 15-year old models labeled as 'Red Lion Santana's that were on the streets several years ago. There are also a number of Audi A6 and Audi A8s on the road along with the Porsche Cheyene SUV and larger BMWs. There even seemed to be some pretty nice cars out near Mt. Emei which was a several hour drive from Chengdu.
3) Road quality. This has also improved a lot versus several years ago and there seems to be a movement towards well-paved six-or-more lane tollways.
4) New buildings. In Chengdu, from our hotel room, it was obvious that several older buildings had been raized and that plans for new ones going in there place were in the works.
5) Protecting the environment. This topic was brought up several times by our guide and now seems to be on the minds of common people in China when it probably wasn't several years back.
6) Disposable income. In Chengdu at least there actually seems to be a decent amount of it. There were big shopping malls and brand name stores around with the likes of Gucci, Bally, Prada, etc. People actually seemed to be buying things in the stores and they didn't look like knock-offs as they seemed to be properly branded.
7) Preserving history. There also seems to be some sort of movement to preserve history by restoring older 'Chinese' style buildings rather than tearing them down as was done in the 'Old Town' area of China. Several years ago, I would imagine that many of the old buildings were just being torn down.

Day 84 (29 August): Sichuan

This morning we flew from Guangzhou to Chengdu. We ate lunch in Chengdu and then headed out to Mt. Emei which is about about 160 km away. Along the way we stopped at a 'Tea Museum' and drove by numerous rice farms and villages.

Arriving in the town at the base of Mt. Emei we saw the Baoguo Temple and then walked around the grounds of the hotel we are staying in which is quite a resort in and of itself and has been the mountain retreat/stomping ground of China's rulers in the past.

Observations:
1) Infrasturce. The airport in Guangzhou was very impressive, besting most US airports. It was only one year old though. The city is clearly awaiting a strong future, although the number of flights in and out is quite high even today.
2) Gas in China is cheap. It cost under $2 a gallon which is less than it was in California when I left nearly three months ago, although I'd imagine its much closer to $3 there these days. Besides which that's 90 octane gas, not the 87 octane stuff that'd be priced lower (but is unavailable in China.)
3) Infrasturcture. The highway to Mt. Emei was quite impressive; it was a very high quality road and the traffic moved quickly. A copuple of the places that people lived along the way, at least from their exteriors looked moderately luxurious which wasn't something I would expect a farming area in many places of the world, especially not in China.
4) Chiang Kai Shek. Walking around the hotel's grounds, one of the reasons that Chiang Kai Shek became unpopular is apparent. He built a palace type retreat for himself here at the same time that the Japanese were invading China. If anyone knew about that, I would imagine they wouldn't be too happy with it. That's probably part of why he ended up with the ROC limited to Taiwan.

Wierd events of the day：
1） 11：30 pm phone call where the person on the other end was speaking in Japanese and looking for a Japanese guy staying in the room. I had to use my Japanese to tell him he made a mistake.
2) 12:30 am knock on the door that we didn't answer followed by a phone call from 'the manager' of the hotel demanding we open the door. Upon opening the door, told that we should have a massage from the lady outside.

Day 83 (28 August): Any junk you could want

In the morning and early afternoon, we toured through some of Guangzhou's more historic sites: the Chen Family Temple (which now serves as the Guangdong Arts Center), the Six Banyan Tree Buddhist Temple (featuring a 9 story pagoda), and the Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall.

In the afternoon, I had a chance to walk around the modern city as Guangzhou really is a modern, 'business' city representing a wide-range of manufacturing in the surrounding areas. The streets have more small shops than anywhere I've ever been and seem to be stacked up inside of malls as well and sell about any kind of junk you could imagine buying--particularly things made of plastic--but also kids toys, lanterns, food products, home design products, etc. I think if you see a product you like in one of the shops, you can order as many as you want wholesale.

Observations:
1) At the older tourist sites there were a number of Western couples pushing around strollers with little Chinese kids in them. Visually giving a sense of the 'one child' policy in China and the foreigners coming in and adopting babies.
2) Chinese view of Japan. This came up with our guide at the Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall as Sun Yat Sen had good relations with the Japanese. Of course being the aniversary of the end of the Japanese defeat in WWII the topic is in the media a lot recently about how they killed innumberable Chinese peasants in the 1930s and 1940s when they occupied NE China and have since refused to acknowledge the incidents. Apparently, according to our guide there is some movement towards boycotting Japanese products afoot, although actually doing so is tough given their wide-sporead use.
3) Smoking. There are a lot fewer people smoking in China and in Hong Kong than I remember from the last time I was in either place (about 3 years ago and about 1 year ago, respectively.) There also seem to be anti-smoking ads around which is new. This would be a big change if smoking becomes uncommon here and a big loss for tabacco companies, although I guess they'll still have India and Eastern Europe to buy ciggarettes.
4) Infrastructure expansion. The Guangzhou subway currently has only 2 lines. By the end of 2006 it is supposed to have 3 and by the end of 2010 it is supposed to have 10. That's an amazing expansion, but probably one that's necessary for the city of 10 Million to becoming a more livable, modern place which from looking around, it is well on its way to becoming and quickly.
5) New Buildings? There seem to be a number of very large buildings around where the construction stopped halfway though and they now sit empty. Despite this there are cranes everywhere and countless buildings with current constuction work happening on them. I don't know what to make of the unfinished buildings. Anyone with some insight, it'd be appreciated.

Day 81 (27 August): Dim Sum in HK, Dinner in Guangzhou

This morning we met my friend Will from UCSD who has spent a lot of time living in Hong Kong for Dim Sum and enjoying seeing his new four-month-old baby Julian as well.

After that we boarded a ferry for Guangzhou in mainland China which took us up the Peral River Delta for several hours.

Observations:
1) Much of Hong Kong is built on reclaimed land including its tallest building. (My friend Will is going to be working in that building soon.)
2) Currency markets show in six-months parity between the Chinese Yuan and the Hong Kong Dollar at a level that means the Yuan would either have to appreciate further or the HK$ would depreciate. Given that both currencies are currently pegged to the US Dollar the markets seem to be predicting some big changes. The only way I could see this happening is if the Chinese government exercised some power over Hong Kong and forced it to devalue its currency, but that wouldn't happen so easily. Otherwise, China would have to revalue again in the next six months which also seems unlikely. Anyone else, have any thoughts on what's going on?
3) I knew that Guangzhou was one of the main places that China is shipping exports from and manufacturing them in but the number of containers you see along the edges of the Peral River Delta and on ships going down it is nonetheless very impressive when you get a chance to actually see it.

Day 81 (26 August): Travel Day

I woke up very early to fly from Christchurch via Sydney to Hong Kong where I met my eighty-seven year old grandmother and father to finish out our trip in China. The total flight time was twelve hours with about four hours of layover.

Observations:
1) New Zealand is really far away from anything. Its 2000 km from Australia, which takes over three hours flying. And the big Australian cities are about a nine hour flight from any other major cities as it is.
2) Australia is really, really big and really, really empty. Most of the flight traversed Australia where I spent seveal hours (since it was daylight this time) looking out at nothing but red ground and a few trees. I couldn't see these on my flight to AUstralia as that was a red-eye.