Moments after this photo was taken the water buffalo exploded in a diarreatic storm. It made quite an impression.

Damingshan

This weekend we took an overnight Chinese tour bus trip to Damingshan. Damingshan (Big Bright Mountain) is a jagged mountain region near the Zhejiang - Anhui border about 200 km from Shanghai. It was such a relief to get out of Shanghai and into some wild areas with clean air and little traffic. We traveled with three friends from Canada and Malaysia and about 25 Chinese and a tour guide that spoke no English.

We met a the Shanghai Tourist Bus Center on Saturday morning at 8 am and rode for almost five hours on a comfortable bus past Hangzhou and westward on the Hanghui Tollroad to Damingshan. After a simple lunch of rice, tomato and scrambled egg, tofu, and various meat dishes I ignored (the chicken head was hard to ignore) we arrived at the park and transfered to minibuses that took us up hairpin curves to a cable car. Near the summit we were deposited at the mouth of a tunnel system that allowed us to walk through the mountains to the best vistas. In one such tunnel we walked for twenty minutes at a fast pace through the mountain. Inside the mountain the tunnel system branched into a maze of tunnels marked with glowing directional signage. Each tunnel culminated at a sheer cliff with a different vista of the surrounding mountains.

The only crowd was at the summit where we found everyone congregated, bare-bellied men smoking, military trainees rapelling, groups of women eating corn-on-the-cob and everyone littering. Most of the crowd took the cable car back down the mountain but we descended for two hours on a quiet trail that followed a clear stream through pine forests and boulders. It reminded me of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains except that the signs were in Chinese and the trails weren't designed by OSHA.

The tour stayed the night at what must have been a one star hotel in Changhua - I loved everything about it except for the hard beds. The fungus-coated shower curtain and the stained carpet was no problem. It added to the character of the place. G-man watched Chinese cartoons while the rest of us went next door for a relaxing foot massage.

On Sunday morning the others started off with a Chinese breakfast of greasy fried bread and soymilk, dried fish, etc. I ate the PB&J sandwich I had brought along for just such an occasion. There's a lot of Chinese foods I like but breakfast is not among them. Then it was off to Shuangxi Village where we boarded bamboo rafts and a trip down a river with water buffalo watching us from the banks. Before we got on the raft we noticed vendors selling waterguns but we thought nothing of it. Unknown to us, water fights are apparently what the Chinese float down rivers for. Every raft that passed us shot us with waterguns - until we remembered we had collapsable umbrellas in our packs. This was, I thought to myself, a good demonstration that deing defenseless and relying on other's goodwill, is not a strategy. Only we and a raft of bewildered Japanese tourists were foolish enough to hit the water unarmed.

On the way back into the city the tour bus stopped at a building for a rest and some "free tea". When we got inside we discovered that after the free tea we, and about 30 other busloads of tourists had to exit through a large maze (literally) of over 50 food and trinket vendors. With some effort, I pushed my way through and out the exit where I watched everyone else emerge like robots with bags of worthless junk under their arms. Despite this last stop the tour to Damingshan was the best US$50 (per person - and included all meals and hotel) I've spent in a long time.

Which Came First?


At Tamati Pizza in Shanghai you can order chicken and egg pizza, pumpkin pizza, and even sweet potato and bacon pizza. At least if you order the chicken and egg pizza you can contemplate the answer to that ancient question of which came first?

Confused and Nixed

While we are on tours in China, I picked up a brochure from one of the tourist agents at the bus station last week that looks very interesting. It advertises a "confused and nixed Shanghai" tour that promises to show the client an "amazing Shanghai". The brochure is skimpy on details of the tour but then why confuse people with the facts?

Shanghai's only Mountain - Sheshan

On Sunday we found the Tour Bus Center near the Shanghai Stadium and took a 1-day tour to Sheshan, a mountain about 30 km from downtown Shanghai. The main attraction of Sheshan is the forested park but the old Catholic Cathedral and astronomical observatory on top of the mountain are also key attractions. To get there we paid 10 rmb (about US$1.25) each to ride through the outskirts of Shanghai for an hour. I had not been through this section of southwest Shanghai and was struck by the miles and miles of dusty industrial and commercial jumble that seems endless. Here and there a modern building, nightclub or residential compound could be seen but the general effect was what I would imagine Baghdad to look like - minus the bombing and killing of course.

Once we got to Sheshan we took a rusting cable car to the top of the mountain and milled around outside the church and enjoyed a 360 degree view of the surrounding countryside. A planned community of tree-lined streets and 2 and 3-story mansions stretched as far as I could see in one direction. There are a lot of very rich people in Shanghai. Off on the horizon, in Zhejiang Province, I could see skyscrapers rising.

To get down the mountain we rode wheeled luge-like boards down a concrete culvert. No safety precautions here - but it was better than the rusty cable car. We had to wait a couple of hours for a bus back to the city but while we waited under an awning in the breeze of a shopfront we met Kenneth of Malaysia and Cammie of Hong Kong. On the way back into the city we agreed to take a trip with them to a mountainous area of Zhejiang Province the next weekend.

Dafeng Deer

Last week I had an opportunity to visit Yancheng (Salt City) and Dafeng (big harvest) in Jiangsu Province. Dafeng is near the sea and is promoting eco-tourism as a focus of economic development. Its primary attractions are nature reserves populated by Milu (David's Deer) Deer and red-crowned cranes.

The deer at the Dafeng Milu Deer Park were restocked from a population of deer originally removed from China by the 11th Duke (or "Duck" of Bedford. The deer were subsequently wiped out in China. Fortunately, the English had taken care of theirs and sent 39 deer back to China in 1986 to repopulate the mudflats of Jiangsu Province.

Walking Backwards

Tai qi is a very popular form of excercise in China - especially for the elderly, who find fencing and pole vaulting too strenuous. On the drive into the office everyday I see hundreds of senior citizens practicing tai qi on the sidewalks, in parks, and in front of department stores. It looks easy but anyone who has tried it knows it 's harder than it looks. Balancing is the most difficult part as the practicioner moves from one stance to another. Some of the elderly tai qiers exhibit a grace and ability I could not have achieved at 20. One old man I saw in a park was repeatedly doing an impossible limbo-like move that involved squatting on one foot and sweeping the ground with the other, extended leg.

One particularly odd thing I've noticed over the last few months is the number of senior citizens walking backwards down the sidewalks in Shanghai. I inquired about this and was informed that it is a form of tai qi. This is what "Ask Ayi" had to say in her blog about this:

Walking Backward - China抯 ancient Mountain and Sea scripture records the exploits of an itinerant immortal who could walk backward faster than the eye could see. Walking backward has been popular ever since. The movement exercises muscles that are not used in ordinary walking, especially in the back, waist, thighs, knees and lower legs. Some people believe walking backwards is akin to a karmic reverse, allowing you to correct mistakes and sins of the past. A version of the walking backward exercise is the walking-backward-while-rolling-magnetic-balls-around-your-hands movement. The magnetic balls electro-magnetically massage acupuncture points in the palms and give aging wrists good exercise.

To me, walking backwards over the obstacle course-like sidewalks of Shanghai seems a dangerous pasttime. The cost / benefit ratio on health benefits would seem to be in favor of the cost side.

How Do they Drink it?

The people of China like their tea and they drink it everywhere and at anytime. They don't however, drink much iced tea and they certainly don't put sugar in it. They drink black tea, green tea, red tea and yellow tea. But the thing that gets me is that they don't strain the tea. At meetings I've been presented with cups of steaming water that look as if the scrapings from the bottom of a lawn mower have been dumped in the cup. Twigs, acorns, grass clippings and leaves. I watch as my hosts lift the cups and manage somehow to drink the infusion without choking on the detritus. I've watched closely to see how they manage to strain out the solid matter but I have yet to solve the puzzle. I try it and I end up with leaves and twigs covering my teeth and lips.

Taxi drivers all have a tall bottle of tea hanging next to them as they drive. The clear bottles reveal a wide variety of tea preferences - usually an unsightly sloshing mess of leaves in brown water. It reminds me of a spittoon but last week I noticed the driver taking me in to work was drinking from a tall glass that looked like a lavalamp. There were elongated bright red blobs floating languidly in oil. For a moment I thought it really was a lavalamp, and I began to feel contemplative as my eyes followed the red blobs floating up and down in the liquid - but then the driver picked it up and drank it.

Shanghai's Garden Spot

I was off work today so I did a lot of walking through parts of Shanghai I had not seen yet. I walked from the Bund north, across Suzhou Creek and into the Hongkou and Zhabei districts that are north of downtown Shanghai. Not a pretty sight. These areas turned out to be by far the worst I've seen in Shanghai.

These are old, crumbling areas of mixed industrial, retail and residential buildings - most in advanced stages of decay. As I walked along Liyang Road that winds alongside a creek I saw more than one tanker truck backed up to the creek dumping raw sewage into the open water that flows between apartment buildings and shops and empties into the Huangpu River near the Bund tourist zone. The stench was overpowering and I had an urgent desire to be somewhere else.

It took me about an hour to walk to the Baoshan subway station. I had to go up and down several overpasses to cross busy streets and detour around street construction. There were open, deep holes in the sidewalks that would be dangerous in the dark. Wires and pieces of steel hanging over sidewalks at eye level. The worst was the amount of spittle, vomit, and all manner of bodily fluids on the sidewalks and overpasses in this area. This has got to be a very unhealthy area to live in. I'm glad I saw something new but I doubt I'll be returning to this unfortunate area of downtown Shanghai.