haifa.19

Haifa Fornightly(Editor--Huzefa Mehta) 20th edition 15/8/93 Returning back from an hectic trip from China, Hong Kong and India. For people who are wondering..how do I manage so much vacation...The answer is that in the month of September if I took 9 days off I would get the whole month off. New year holidays in Israel.. So Shavua tovah(happy new year)..with the beginning of peace .. Sunday Sept 12th ---------------- Left early in the morning to Bucharest in Romania. Why we took this flight was clear. Flying by Romanian airlines Tarom gives us the cheapest airfare to Beijing(around $400). Reached Bucharest early in the morning and found that we could not enter Bucharest inspite of the 21 hr transit to the next flight to Beijing. Indians need to apply for visa earlier they said. To get to the airport hotel we needed to go outside and need a visa. Finally Reena managed to convince the authorities and banao a day's visa. Tarom took us to the hotel. Bucharest seemed to be very quiet. I did not see any modern buildings and the weather was continously cloudy and dark. It was seeing a eastern european movie. The only shops open were liquor and cigarette shops. We took the tram to the main center and walked around in the rain. Nothing too impressive. The people were nice and very quiet. I forget what the currency was..but I remember that we exchanged about $50 and found that we could not convert back the whole amount. Took the Beijing flight that night and reached next day 5 pm. The Bucharest flight was very painful. There was no smoking restrictions and almost everyone from Romania seemed to smoke. The food was bad and not fresh and inspite of reserving vegetarian food for Reena she did not get any for the 17 hour flight. I had a severe food poisioning and vomiting bout. The only good and fresh food we found was at Karachi where the plane stopped for refueling. The plane passed thru the upper stretch of the himalayas and xiniang and the tibetan plateau was the only refreshing moments of the flight. Tue 14th September. ------------------ We reached Beijing that evening. The baggage came without any problems. We got some money. China has a very funny money system in that it has a separate currency for the foreigners. This is called the FEC yuan/jiao/fen as opposed to the common RNB yuan/jiao/fen. $1=5.6 yuan; 1 yuan = 10 jiao; 1 jiao=10 fen An FEC (foreign exchange currency) is valued the same as the RNB currency however only the FEC is convertible back to dollars. Every only in Beijing seemed to want the FEC but only give back RNB and there were some who did not accept RNB from foreigners. Some touts wanted to exchange an FEC for 1.45 RNB(1 yuan 40 jiao 5 fen). Even the prices had different quotes if you paid in RNB. Anyways we found an airport bus which took us to the center somewhere around Tinaimen square. Found 2 cycle rickshaws who showed us some brochures of hotels and we agreed to be driven there. After a couple of hotel tours we found that most of the prices were atleast double from what was quoted in the guide books. Finally asked them to take us to a student hotel at southern end of Beijing. Having not negotiated the price they asked for a ridiculous 100 FEC yuan which we gave only to find later that it was like giving 1000 rupees to a taxiwala in Bombay. At the Qianyan hotel the receptionist claimed that she had no rooms after enquiring if we had Indian passports. I went looking around for other hostels in the neighbourhood only to be refused after I told them I had an Indian passport. Reena found that after she refused us several people came asking for rooms and they had found. Luckily she found a chinese girl who knew English and registered Reena along with her. The receptionist could not refuse. A stray incident we thought but it recurred in a couple of more places. Later when we were in Chengdu our such notions were dispelled when we met some really nice chinese people. Maybe it had just to do with attitudes of people in big cities compared to small places. Amazing amount of beaucracy encountered everywhere. Maybe it was just lack of communication -- at some places it looked to us that that inability to communicate was used against us..specially if the person behind the counter had not given us the correct change, or had made a mistake. Beauracracy --invented by the Chinese along with paper, silk and other technological inventions. Language was one of the biggest problems..For a foreigner to even try to speak or learn chinese is ridiculous. Many times we thought they(the Chinese) were speaking chinese when they were actually speaking English. Also the chinese grammar has a way of asking questions in multiple choice. ie Do you want to eat rice/dont want to eat rice? Do you want this or that? And the person just has to pick the answer. The phrase book was useful.. without that it would be impossible...we should have a taken the food phrasebook too so that we would have much problems in eating. Learning some useful words in Mandarin ..but recognizing the alphabets or reproducing them was almost impossible. Wed Sept 15th ------------- After sufficient rest that night we rented bikes..mostly to see the Forbidden city. There were couple of good restaurants serving western breakfast nearby. About 45 minites bike ride from the hotel. We were near the Tinyamen gate. The phrasebook in the guide was most helpful giving us english phrases next to chinese written phrases. The book also an english to chinese directory of places and names. Biking in Beijing was effortless with the whole city designed for bikers. and with a lot of people biking. We spent the whole day in the Forbidden city("the last emperor -- puyi"). Impressive to see the Forbidden city. Really huge courtyards and stairways. Most of them arranged in hierarchical order for different stages of beauraucracy. It is very huge,about 9000 rooms. A constant restoration is always under way and by the time they finish ie after 10 years it is time to start restoration again. It was the hideaway for the Ming and Qing dynasties spending time with their time with maids. Had a huge number of eunuchs taking care of the palace a lot of them addicted to opium. The last emporer improved the design to promote usage of bikes and popularized the usage of bikes. Then we biked around Tianamen(pronounced as ti-ya-me) and returned home. Tianamen Square a place which has about 2 revolutions one in 1976 and the Spring Revolution in 1989 in which Dian Xiopings army crushed the student revolution. Now police manned the huge square keeping watch as people gathered mostly to fly kites and take photo's with the Tianamen gate in the background with Mao Zendong huge photo where he had declared the People's Republic in 1949. Famous buildings in the backdrop, Great Hall of the People and History Museum of the Revolution. Did not have time to visit any of this but took some patel shots in the background. Thursday Sept 16th. ------------------ The next day we went to some parks in Beijing.. The Beihai Park..which is supposed to have been the work of one Mr. Kublai Khan lots of temples and an island in the center with the Jade Islet having the 1.5 m high white Jade Buddha. The Mongols(Genghis Khan) penetrated the Great Wall from the Gobi desert and his grand son,Kublai khan. had the biggest country ever ruled in the world from Turkey, to Soviet Russia and were responsible for improving the silk road. Went to see the church in Beijing and mosque. Went to the Lama temple by far one of the best temples I have seen. Its a Tibetan temple within China outside that of Tibet. Huge statues of Maitreya(future) Buddha and the statues of past, present and future Buddha's, the last hall, the Wanfu has an 18m high Maitreya in the Tibetan form sculpted from a single piece of sandalwood.(Also mentioned in the guiness book of world records). Some strange writings inside the temple which we photographed had Sanskrit, Chinese(Mandarin), Arabic, Chinese(Cantonese). This temple was really superb and it was operational with devotees and monks praying and insensitive tourists moving behind the statues to take photographs of worshipping buddhists. We biked hard to reach before the closing time of the Temple of Heaven but it was too late. So we sat around and watched people doing tai-chi. Although the communist government professes athesism("Religion is the opium of the masses"), A lot of religious groups are active. Muslim relgion brought in by the turks and by prophet Mohammed's uncle to China and traders,unlike most other countries was brought to China peacefully, Christianity brought in by the Portuguese and Syrians(confusing?) and buddhism and judaism brought in by the traders along the silk road. A lot of temples,monasteries,mosques were destroyed during the cultural revolution in order to "remove old ideas, culture, and customs used by exploitation class". Mao published his ideas in the little red book --now almost a collectors item. We tried searching for this if but couldnt find one. While biking around managed to see a fashion show --very trendy and fashionable. Thursday Sept 17th. ------------------ The next day we took the bus to the great wall at mu-tan-yu. Really well preserved section of the 5000km wall meant to protect China from the mongols..some sections are really well built...the wall hugs the ridges and we followed on section till we came to the unrestored portion of the wall growing with trees and weeds. This section we visited had very little tourists. The transportation was by bus and was almost 3 hours from Beijing. Some of the sections were really very steep --an almost straight ladder climb. One of the building materials used was the bodies of the deceased workers. The cultural revolution during Mao Zendongs time took its toll when most people took blocks of stone to build their own. "The strength of the wall depends on the courage of those who defend it"-Genghis Khan Friday Sept 18th ----------------- The next day we biked to the summer palace outside Beijing...almost 35-40 km from the hotel the palace is located over a hill and faces a lake. The other side of the hill was almost a Shangri-la with so many buddhist temples with cute bells and courtyards cluttering the slopes. The freeways for cyclists are merged along with the main freeways. and is very interesting to see how they have designed the exits and flyovers for cars and bycycles so that they do not intersect with each other. Could not go to Beijing opera or eat the Peking duck--was costly -- almost 30 yuan. We bought a very decorative chop-stick set in Beijing Saturday Sept 19th ------------------ We finally made it the Tiantan park--Temple of Heaven.. Place where the emperor and empress came to pray. The next half day we looked around in Beijing and took the flight to Shanghai. Shanghai was very different from Beijing. Shanghai was very European--almost everyone spoke English--Beijing people were shy and traditional. The plan was to spend a couple of days in Shanghai and then go to Nanjing...The hotel prices in Shanghai were phenomenal the cheapest was 220 yuan ($45) for a double with all dormitories occupied. Sunday Sept 20th ---------------- Food was a problem too. Shanghai we came acrross the food exotica of china..in Beijing which is used to the sober foreign tourist market I could get my braised/sliced chicken in garlic/plum sauce with cashew/almonds/peanuts variations. and Reena mostly on vegetable noodles or rice, bean curd.. but in Shanghai almost nobody served that and entering a restaurant was entering an aquarium or zoo. live frogs, snakes, eels all on display to be eaten. We were told to go to the kitchen to point out things we liked..it was not possible to trust the phrasebook to believe in what we asked was what we ordered. We survived on pastries and bread for two days that too was stuffed in some places with unknown variety of meat. We went to the Jade Buddha temple --Jade Buddha almost 1m+ tall studded with jewels. It was raining all the time and very foggy. Walked around the Bund hugging the Yellow China Sea. Unable to go to Nanjing which was one of the cities on our agenda we decided to cut short our stay in Shanghai (nothing very interesting in this very crowded city)and go to Chengdu. In China we realized prices are OFFICIALLY hiked up for the tourists. A taxi driver will quote the Chinese a different price and you a different. Train fares are different for Chinese and tourists. Lot of foreigners travelling for a long time pay Chinese touts to get them the Chinese priced tickets. Would not work if caught though since they would have to pay up for the foreigner price. Seemed unfair to me...some places in hotels it was really unfair and one could really see the waitress or the person concerned trying to calculate what would be the price they should quote that we would pay. Most of them never lost face if we decided to call it unfair and they insisted on giving them that price. Some places in Beijing which was non-touristi and had never seen tourists before we found things so ridiculously cheap(almost a 10 times difference). Some places even if a someone wanted to help us--there would be some rude exchanges between the business man and the person helping us..and the other guy would be forced to leave without helping us. Found place in the dorms which cut our staying prices down(dorm price 30 yuan per person) Monday Sept 21st ---------------- Took the flight to Chengdu. Our taxi had an accident on the way to the airport and when the police arrived we decided we had to find our own way-- so we got out and luckily the police helped us in transportation to the airport. Chengdu was one of the best places we saw in China the people were really very friendly. Prices were not marked up for foreigners and there were people ready to fight with the shopkeepers if someone charged us more...The hotel (Traffic) was nice with lot of tourists...planning to take off for Tibet. The touristi food was available...We could get an English menu to choose from and we were happy...Rented bike in Chengdu and saw a monastery(Wenshu Monastery)..Could not convince Reena to eat the vegetarian exotica at the temple.(Vegetarian shrimp/chicken all made from tofu) Wanted to see the Sichuan opera but could not. The same day we took the bus to Leshan the site of the giant buddha... The 3 hour trip took us 5 hours due to road construction and we reached there around 7pm. At Leshan we could not find an appropriate hotel for quite sometime One of the hotels was meant exclusively for Chinese and one other was beyond our budget..at around 10 pm we got a room at an hotel Tuesday Sept 22nd ---------------- The next day we went to see the Giant Buddha ...Took the ferry accross the river. The Giant Buddha or Dafo is about 71m long (the biggest in the world) and he is sitting...Runner up is one in Afghanistan...From the ferry the Buddha looked really mystical. With muddy waters and the Buddha looking all hairy with plants growing all over His body. The boat dropped us near a monastery and after about an hour of walking thru small rock cut routes we reached the foot of the Buddha. Toe is about 8,3m long. We climbed over his body and reached the top to a monastery at his head. climbed down from the mountain to the bottom and took a rickshaw to the bus stand where we took the bus to the bottom of Mt. Emei. to the Buoguosi village. We stayed in the monastery at the bottom of Mt. Emei. Beautiful and nice with 1000 years of character..plans were to hike Mt. Emei at 3500m over two days. However we were sore from continous travel and carrying of bags. Wednesday Sept 23rd ------------------- We decided not to hike but to take the mini bus near to the top. We had a fight with the driver who charged us 50 yuan per person once we started but came down to 30 yuan.. some chinese travellers travelling with us signalled to us that we should not pay more than 6 yuan..but then the driver said for foreigners 30 yuan and he showed us some official looking document in Chinese of course so we decided to let it go. The scenery going up was just fascinating..Waterfalls at every turn and rapidly flowing streams..lots of pilgrims and tourists with us... Reached the top...and climbed up till the cable car which took us to the Ten thousand Buddha summit and the Golden summit. Walked around and withing about half an hour we were covered in heavy fog. The scenery around was beautiful.. and with prayers chanted in the background. Reena found monkeys to play with. Spent about an hour and half and returned down and back to the monastery that evening where we took the bus back to Chengdu.. Thursday Sept 24th ------------------ Found no space in the traffic hotel...stayed in the dorm and watched till late in for the results of the 2000 olympic bid. The next day we rented bikes and biked approximately 45km out of town to a monastery(Monastery of Divine light) ... it was quite tiring... wanted to see the panda zoo(sichuan is home of the panda) but we could not find the zoo. Returned back in the evening. Friday Sept 25th ---------------- The next day we spent a day relaxing and washing clothes writing letters.. Saturday Sept 26th ----------------- We bought some few things and left for Canton. In heavy rain we could not find a right dorm. Finally found a hotel at $38 for double bedroom. Costly but what could you do.. Walked around the city that day in rain -- Sunday Sept 27th ---------------- The next day we roamed the city seeing a pagoda temple and a mosque. Bought some chinese crockery. We found a place which could serve simple tea and coffee and spent the rest of the time eating there. Canton is famous for the exotic food. The market is almost like a take out zoo. Monkeys sitting in cages awaiting their fate, lizards, snakes, frogs, thousand live turtles all placed over each other, dogs, cats, owls, pigeons, rats all either on display or just faced a violent death. Surely enough to make one quit non-veg atleast for a couple of weeks. The most famous is the "3 squeal" which is a live rat embryo. Called because the embryo squeals 3 times, twice when it is dipped in two sauces and the third time when it is bitten in the mouth. That night we changed to a cheaper $15 dollar bedroom and spent the rest of the time roaming around the area near the pearl river. The next day we went to Hong Kong Monday Sept 28th ---------------- Crossed the border by train. After missing the train in hectic crowd battling and desperately running out of FEC's we found seats to Hong Kong. At the border in Hong Kong we could not find any banks open and hence could not get train tickets to Kowloon. However a chinese lady helped us with a few HK dollars and we could finally board the train. The difference across the border was noticeably different from the bicycle happy chinese to the cordless happy hongkongians. Seemed to me everyone had those mobile phones. Stayed in a dormitary in the infamous Chungking mansions mostly owned by Indian and Pakistani owners. Had a binge on Indian food after a while and it was really very satisfying. Tuesday Sept 29th ----------------- Went over to the hongkong island the next day. saw the hongkong shanghai bank, walked around the shopping areas and to the victoria peak for views of hongkong. Roamed around the Kowloon island. The next day we took the flight back to Bombay The time we spent in China/Hongkong was really very less. In China we found travellers spending almost a year or more in China getting familiar with China more than the Chinese themselves. Shoestring budget is not really possible now in China as markets have really opened up and prices have risen very high. We could have gone to Xian from Kashgar which is the silk road path in China, Nanjing, Tibet, Heavenly lake in Xinxiang, Inner Mongolia and lot of the trekking parks..We will come back to China again on the silk road or tibet. India opens up a border with China linking Himachal Pradesh and Tibet. We met some people who had done the whole of the silk road ..right from Istanbul to Afghanistan, Pakistan and then Kashgar to Xian. In Hongkong we could have spent more time and gone to the new territories or to Macau. We spent really a short time knowing things. We wanted to see the Beijing Opera but couldn't or a trapeze show. Now that the cultural revolution in China has been officially disapproved by Deng Xioping a lot of culture is being revived. I felt bad at China not getting the Olympic 2000 as they have really made an effort in Beijing, although a lot of the xenophobic attitude is still there. Could not get to know any of the chinese people mainly because of the language problems most of the them shying away. Did not quite experiment with the food..tried dim-sum for breakfast in Canton..but that was it. Did not feel like eating any culinary exotica. In India(Sept 30th -- Oct 7th) ------------------------------ We relished it all...the Indian food on the plane..the bus ride back home from Sahar..surprising people at home(who were not expecting us) ...There was an earthquake that morning we had landed(we landed in the night). Nearly 40,000 died. Lots of people helping and many people contributing for the relief. We saw two movies both of them good(if you like Hindi masala movies), Gumrah and Khalnayak..Had double lunches,dinners and breakfasts(one at my place and other at Reena's). My parents had a dinner for approx 170 people at the masjid. Meeting relatives and friends. Spent the final moments of our first anniversary in Samrat with Reena's parents and mine. Travel back to Israel was not so exciting..in the sense that I did not get seats back from Rome(the whole of Israel getting back after the Shavuot). Finally managed to get seats on a flight...but my bags stayed at Rome.