Eastern China 1986

Shanghai, Beijing &  Ethnic Minorities in Yunnan Province

We traveled from Hong Kong to Shanghai by sea on the SS Shanghai. It cost us $75 US each for three nights, in a comfortable, air-conditioned 3rd class private room  with 3 meals/day.  We were not sure if the staff were really conscientious or just curious about westerners. Four smiling gals would enter our room to refill the thermos or empty the wastepaper basket. One day, our wastepaper basket was emptied five times. The entire ship was kept very clean.

There were about 250 Chinese passengers and 20 westerners on board. At mealtimes, the passengers would charge in like it was a game of musical chairs. Everyone ate quickly with one hand holding the rice bowl and the other hand operating chopsticks to rapidly shovel food in. Within half an hour, the dining room was often empty except for lingering westerners enjoying their tea. On one occasion, a waitress was anxious to clear our table and said "please bye".  We got the hint and left.

We never did play ping pong nor watch a movie in the cinema, but we sometimes floated in the miniscule pool and used the reading room to catch up on the latest Chinese propaganda. 

On our last morning, breakfast was served early as we cruised up the Huangpu Rier. Freighters, bulk carriers, sculling sampans, ferries, tugs, passenger boats manoeuvered the mud brown waters. We passed a forest of cranes, derricks, conveyor belts and forklifts. There were shipyards, navy docks, loading docks and refineries. Shanghai appeared like something out of the 1930's. Revolutionary music blared from navy boats as we docked. 

Once we cleared immigration (two officials processed the entire ship in 2 hours), we staggered out in the 10:00am summer heat. Our arrival coincided with a heat wave bringing temperatures of 38c. The Pujiang Hotel once advertised itself as the Waldorf Astoria of the Orient and the largest, best and most modern hotel in the Far East. It had gone down hill since then. We registered and went up to the third floor where we were directed to our assigned rooms. For 3 USD each we stayed in separate cavernous dorms containing 8 to 20 steel framed beds. 

It was too warm for "sightseeing" but we did wander the city early and late in the day. In the parks and walkways along the nearby Bund were hundreds of middle-aged and elderly people, performing early morning Tai Chi exercises. In front of the large department stores, employees lined up and performed their compulsory calisthenics.  The department stores did not have much on offer.  Bakeries had orderly queues of people to collect their rations of bread and buns. I tried my luck at acquiring some buns and stood at the end of the line. A helpful chap, grabbed my arm, dragged me to the front of the line. He then literally snatched a bag of buns from a customer and paid for it with my money.  I should have invited him along as our liaison officer, because we could have used his help later in the trip to acquire just about everything.

Shanghai was considered to be quite fashionable by Chinese standards. The men dressed in short sleeve white shirts (or undershirts), with tight shorts and knee height black nylon socks with vinyl sandals with 1 1/2" heels. The women wore cheap dresses (knee to bum length), knee-high hosiery and vinyl sandals. Women were sporting perms and a variety of hairstyles. We would have to wait for the rural areas to see the more traditional Mao outfits.

Transport was mostly by bicycle. The articulated streetcars were busy but each ride cost only 4 fen (less than 2 cents). There was almost constant hand  sweeping of the streets going on. Marshals, wearing red arm bands, watched for people littering or spitting. There were designated places (grids) to spit in. We were once warned not to spit out watermelon seeds on to the ground.

We started to understand how to order food in restaurants. First, we lined up to buy food tickets. Most of the items were not available, and then with the ticket you went into another line to collect the food. It could be a long wait. We would later find that in small towns, the process was much less orderly. 

On a day excursion to Suzchou, the "Venice of the East", we rented bicycles for 50 cents/day. It was hot in Suzchou but the shaded tree-lined streets offered some relief. We felt the pavement softening under our wheels in the heat. Towards the end of the day, we sat on a bridge over a busy canal. Some of the barges were propelled by engines but many by poles or giant oars. Swimmers would sometimes hoist themselves aboard the barges for a free ride.  Fishermen used bamboo spears to catch tiny fish.  Then we retreated from the  Suzchou heat and caught a one-hour train back to the Shanghai heat.

It was a 17 hour train ride from Shanghai to Beijing. Compared to our experiences of train travel in India, it was luxurious. The sleepers had padded beds with pillows and blankets, curtains on the windows and ready thermoses of hot water. There were no unticketed throngs of passengers in the compartments. Chinese music and announcements kept us awake from 6:00 am onward. 

Beijing temperatures were milder than Shanghai, in the low thirties Celcius. It had wide avenues with bicycles everywhere and plenty of ongoing construction. Another traveller had recommended a new 10 story hotel on the edge of the city core. We haggled with the hotel front desk and eventually were assigned dormitory beds for 10 Renimbi (3 USD) each. We both got our own rooms, but Glenn shared his with two French guys for a couple of nights, and then we had rooms 920 and 917 to ourselves. We spent 9 days in Beijing.

We rented "Flying Pigeons" for our Beijing stay for 2 Yuan/day. Over the next 8 days, we cycled over 200km applying for visas, sight-seeing and shopping. Bicycle lanes were provided on most streets and although the lanes were often packed, it was still much faster than taking the crowded buses. We would weave our way through the pack, passing single riders, men with women sitting on the back rack, and mothers with their children balancing on the crossbar or on make-shift bamboo seats. Other children rode on side cars, older passengers sometimes sat on soft seats pulled on the back of the bikes and bicycle porters pulled flatbeds transporting anything from TV sets, refrigerators to sofas and beds.

A trip to Beijing isn’t complete without the dish that derives the name from the capital; Beijing duck. On our first night in Beijing we went to the "Big Duck" restaurant, south of Tiananmen Square. It was busy. We stood behind occupied chairs watching Chinese devouring their food. A waitress came by to take our order and payment. We and eight others took our seats when they became free.  After a while, the waitress returned to clear the table and bring out the food.. We also figured out the beer; I followed someone out of the restaurant to a bar next door. I bought a pitcher of beer and brought it into the restaurant, and later returned the pitcher for the deposit. The meal wait was well worth it (6 USD), as the duck was delicious and the experience was priceless. 

We went a second time to the Big Duck, a little more savvy. The restaurant opened at 4:30pm and we joined the assembled crowd. When the doors opened, there was a mad surge of humanity, children were pushed aside and pregnant women were trampled on, and everyone rushed to a seat. Fortunately for us, the crowd seem to rush right past the first few tables so we came in at the tail end of the hunt and we assumed our places. We got first duck that day (akin to first tracks at a ski hill).  

One early evening, we sat in the gargantuan Tiananmen Square and watched the masses; families playing ball and flying kites, Chinese tourists taking their last few photos of the family while the sun set with the massive portrait of Mao hanging from the palace gates that overlooks all. The Tiananmen Square protests were still three years off. We saw no tanks. We rode home in the last light of the day. In the evening,  people came out of their apartments to enjoy the coolness of the day. Groups of men sat on small stools under the street lights to play cards. In the early mornings, elders would meet in small parks and some would sing Chinese opera while others brought bird cages to mimic the songs.

When in Beijing, tourists must visit the Forbidden City, Mao's Memorial Hall, the Temple of Heaven and make the trek to the Great Wall. We saw them all, along with throngs of Chinese tourists. 

Although the worship of Mao seemed to be a thing of the past, each morning thousands of Chinese queued for a quick passing glance of the Chairman. Once we had checked in our bag, we scooted around to a special entrance for foreigners. It was the quickest, most orderly line-up in all of China.A crew of attendants ensured that we did not linger as we passed the wax-like corpse, draped with a red flag. And yes, he really did have a mole on the left side of his chin.

The Temple of Heaven is considered to be the pinnacle of classical Chinese architecture. It supports the theory that Heaven is round and Earth is square.

Beijing has a number of city parks with small artificial lakes. We visited a park (admission fee was 5 fen, roughly 1 cent) near our hotel and rented a rowboat for a circuit of the lake, much to the approval of the other boaters. Later, we watched a man hunt cicadas with a long pole and a sticky substance. He picked them out of trees and put them in a small cage, for what purpose , we didn't know.

The Great Wall at Badaling is 70km from Beijing and we heard from other tourists that the tours did not allow sufficient time a the wall (just 2 hours), so we opted for local transit. The joke was on us; we took 5 buses and then we and a troupe of Chinese, every bit as ignorant as ourselves, boarded a train, that we could have taken from Beijing. It was followed by a half hour walk, totalling 5 and half hours to get there, giving us about 2 hours at the wall before catching a train back to the city. The wall was crawling with people, ten abreast in places. We moved along and the crowds thinned out. We can not confirm that it stretched 5,000kms, but it looked like it went a good long way. The wall, albeit the small section we visited, was impressive.

We tried our luck at purchasing train tickets at local prices in the Beijing train station. We arrived early one morning to massive queues snaking along the building, disappearing into a series of doors. I waited an hour to reach a wicket, only to have the ticket seller launch into a screaming two minute oration through the loudspeaker apparatus that burned my ears with instructions to go to the tourist office. However the foreigner booking office was also sold out of tickets on the days that we wished to depart Beijing. We went back into the regular queue and then with some local help, found our dates were sold out. Once the foreigner office reopened after lunch, we opted to pay the premium prices for a later departure date. The woman behind the wicket queried our occupations that we had entered on the ticket request form (Taipei English teachers). We had been warned not to use our cards in Beijing, but once we shown her our false credentials and passports, she sold us tickets to Kunming at local prices, 80 Yuan, payable in FEC (25 USD). 

The 60 hour train journey from Beijing to Kunming covered about 3,000km. The soft sleeper was not as high as standard as the Shanghai-Beijing show train, but it was still more comfortable than its Indian counterpart. We often shared meals with an American couple who were also travelling soft sleeper. The train stopped for 15 minutes at stations a few times a day allowing passengers to wash at sinks on the platform. 

We had an overnight stay in Kunming and ate well at a place called the "Cooking School". We jumped on a bus the following morning for the 11 hour journey to Dali. We stayed at the Number Two hotel and enjoyed the pleasant regional town and our first Chinese experience without crowds of people. The Number Two Hotel was across from the town basketball courts. At 6:30am the screeching music started up and by 7:00am the elders started up their Tai Chi exercises in the dark. There was only one time zone in China, so dawn came late, the further west you went. Later in the day, the elders would return for a volleyball game, sometimes playing an impromptu tourist team, all in fun. There was a croquet area next to the courts and croquet balls would often roll out into the volleyball game.

Most hotel rooms, restaurant tables and train compartments come equipped with a hot thermos. The Chinese always kept a stash of tea in their pockets. We learned that at hotels, to put our thermos outside  the door in the evenings. Staff were required to refill the thermos containers , early mornings and they would enter rooms without knocking to do the necessary task. One tourist told us that we was awakened at 6:30am by a woman who was changing the pillowcases. 

After a full day in Dali (we would return) it was onto a not-so-comfortable 6 hour bus ride to Lijiang, in a valley up in the hills. First impressions were disappointing, looking at grey monolithic buildings, a Mao statue in the concrete square and a drab, rundown tourist hotel. However, a little ways away, lay the old town with cobblestone alleys, two story wood and stone houses. The streets were alive with activity. In the centre was a daily market packed with people haggling over the prices of vegetables, fruit, live chickens and rabbits. 

Numerous private shops lined the alleys. Seamstresses were machining clothes, women were kneading dough to make noodles, animal skin merchants, clock repairmen, dentists working on patient's mouths could be all seen while walking the narrow streets of Lijiang.

The Naxi (aka Nakhi) minority people are centered around Lijiang. The women wore blue tunics, pants and aprons, sometimes with a sheepskin cape. The cape is decorated with seven embroidered discs representing the stars. Some wore brimless felt caps but the blue Mao cap was most popular. The younger men had adopted Mao style clothing but the older men still wore coats of skins and furs, large brimmed leather hats, toting hand carved wooden pipes. We saw one man carrying a four foot long bamboo pipe.

Sheila bought a blue Mao jacket to "blend in". It turned out to be a man's jacket which made some people laugh. On one occasion, we sat quietly watching the action until a friendly, elderly Chinese fellow welcomed us to Lijiang and engaged us into pleasant conversation. In short order, a crown formed and well, so much for "blending in". All in good fun.

We were in Lijiang during the semi-annual horse fair. The horse market was on the edge of town and it rained over the two days that we were there, so it got quite muddy, shoe-sticking muddy. Horse feed was also on sale, as were harnesses and crudely make horsehoes. Hill tribe people from all over, as far as Eastern Tibet, came to buy.

The most colourful dressed women that we saw at the Lijiang market were of the Yi people, who speak a Tibeto-Burman language. They wore layers of colourful full length, flared skirts with multi-coloured trimmed blouses and vests, and silver plate neckties. They wore a large black flat headdress with coloured trim and thread to hold it in place, often accented with large silver disc earrings with beads and chains necklaces. I tried to photograph them, but they were extremely shy.

We would have stayed longer in Lijiang, but we headed back on a relatively 6 hour bus ride to Dali  for the legendary Monday market at Shaping.  By the time we returned to Dali, our chest colds were well established and our pace would slow until we could shake the colds that seemed to afflict many locals and visitors alike.

We took a bus to the north end of Erhai lake and the Monday market. It didn't really get going until late morning but the vendors and buyers arrived in the thousands, mostly women. The Bai women added so much colour to the crowd in their bright conspicuous outfits.

The Shaping market had stalls for vegetables, fruit, hand beaten metal spoons of all sizes, rope sandals, false teeth, material, ribbons, fish traps, crude wooden furniture, firewood, rope, horse tackle, cheese, flowers, clothes, shoes, pasta and so on but all in specific sections. Chickens were inspected by holding them upside down by their feet to determine weight and size. Massive pigs were butchered on tables in the meat section. 

The live piggy section was of particular interest. The sellers tied the piggies by their two back legs and often secured the ropes to a peg in the ground. Some sellers had more than one large beast and stood clutching the ropes in one hand and their feet were firmly planted on the ground, like a chariot rider holding the reins of a horse team. 

A dentist stood ready with his drill, a barber was kept busy. Equally busy was the watch repairman and the stalls catering to the hungry; fresh bread,  noodle soups and cooked pig parts.

The food was a pleasure in Dali; people bent backwards to serve us and even in the smallest of hole-in-the-wall restaurants provided English menus. It was a contrast from our experiences in Han China where ordering and eating food was often problematic. In many Chinese restaurants, we were greeted by a sour-faced woman behind a counter, selling tickets with a chalkboard indicating what is available. My Chinese was limited and non-existent when it came to reading the characters. Our eating options were to leave and look for a tourist restaurant or look around the restaurant tables for something recognizable and for what I knew the Chinese name. Sometimes, we gained entry into the kitchen and pointed at a few things for our meal. On one occasion, I approached a table and asked the fellow to write down the dish names on a piece of paper that I provided, but he simply wrote the prices down. So, I dragged him over to the blackboard and had him point out the dishes! The cost of a simple 3-4 dish meal in a local restaurant was 3 Yuan, or $1 for two people. 

Once the food came out of the kitchen counter (waitresses were uncommon), the  fun started. We had our own chopsticks and the trick was to make as much of a mess as possible and spit the bones on the floor. In fact, the sign of a good restaurant was an inch and half of fresh bones on the floor. So, you'll have to excuse us for eating in the Coca Cola Restaurant in Dali. Pizza was a nice change from rice and pork.

It was twelve hours back on the bus to the grey and dusty city of Kunming. We stayed at the Kunhu Hotel, a Chinese hotel allowed to take in foreigners. The spitting and hacking into the numerous hallway spittoons echoed down the cement corridors. Doors were left open and room visitors attempted to talk above the TV's that blasted at full volume.

All the hard sleepers to Chengdu were booked out, so we opted for a first class sleeper on the 16 hour 94-Express from Kunming to Chengdu. In Chengdu, we had a room on the seventh floor with a nice view but the hotel did not have elevators. The staff must have been quite fit.  We managed to book a flight to Lhasa for 130 USD, so it was off to Tibet.