Four Posts from Lois

Mama Lois on shopping, 7 years later

Before there used to be hawkers, surrounding your bus, and everywhere you would go. They’re not there, even in the cities, very little. Now they’ve put them in shops and stalls, and it looks like they’re not allowed to run after the tourists, they just have to shout and hope you come over. Before it was fun, sometime annoying but fun. I don’t know how those people who lived off tourists are doing, I don’t think as well. To me that’s a huge difference. I think a lot of people could make a living selling things like silk scarves, now you have to go to a stall, and it’s harder to stop when the guide is rushing you along. It has to be hurting their livelihood.

Mama Lois on Changes in Cities

When we were here last, it was before the Olympics. It was in chaos, everything was being built. The highway rings around Beijing were still being built. If it wasn’t being built it was being renovated. Half of the hotel was being renovated while we were staying in the other half. Now, it’s not the same cities. None of them are the same cities, they’re magnificent. They rival any in the world. But we didn’t see that, we only saw the construction.

The flowers and trees are everywhere now. Everything’s so lush. They’ve put in drip systems. That didn’t exist either.

Everyone was warning about pollution, I didn’t sense it, nothing to what I was expecting. It’s not any more polluted than any of our cities. I think it’s the press.

There are more Western toilets for women now, not just the squat toilet. The trick is to go to the handicapped stall.

I’m not criticizing China. It’s breathtaking how much they’ve progressed in 7 years. The infrastructure, the roads, the gardens. The people are well fed. It’s a different country.

Mama Lois on changes in people

I think the people are more open & friendly than 7 years ago. They were very closed up and afraid to talk to us, very conservative. Now I think they’d answer anything. Very pro-West. I think the government has changed, and the capitalism has come out so strongly. They’ll never go back to what we think of as communism, they’ve tasted it now.

The few temples I saw were more historical, little sense of belief. I think that’s true now too. I saw a few monks in the Forbidden City, that’s it.

There were more soldiers then. The cities were like armed camps. They were around the hotels, they were everywhere. Now they just guard the sites.

Last time, October, we saw a lot of poor peasants in the fields. They didn’t have oxen; they were just pulling the plow with the yoke on the man, and the woman walking alongside.

Mama Lois on Dazu changes

Dazu is a world Heritage site, 800 years old, with Buddhas carved into the cliff, from small to huge lying down. The site itself hasn’t changed, just the approach to the site. The road to the site now is smooth paved, stone walls to either side. Before, a windy unpaved road with pretty steep drops, no protection, so narrow that two buses couldn’t pass; someone would have to give way and get off to the side as best they could. Now, on either side, they’re building beautiful buildings. It used to be just farmers and huts, now you see buildings going up and towns coming up. New housing, new roads. People here look prosperous now, they didn’t before .

I don’t remember the plaza at all. When we went into Dazu, the big fancy plaza wasn’t there, just a big dirt & gravel area with lots of vendors. Now, nicely paved wide plaza, big statues, computerized entrance gate, no vendors. No fancy turnstiles, today there were two. The lower plaza was also just dirt, and full of vendors. The change is unbelievable. Once you started down the ancient stairs, it was the same. There were never any vendors downstairs, but the above was loaded with them. It was fun. I don’t know why they got rid of all the vendors; maybe they thought it was too third world.

The Guides

Our local guides have been uniformly excellent.

As we were leaving Chongqing today, our local guide there, whose English name is Kevin, gave us a quote from Confucius:

"A friend comes from afar, brings a distant land closer." -

Kevin (chonqing)

Anna (Xi'an)

Summer (Guilin)

MamaLois on the Changing Yangtze

Seven years ago, when we took the Yangtze River cruise, it was far more primitive and colorful. The dam had not been completed; that’s why we took the trip when we did. The mountains were steep but terraced down to the water; the last 100 feet were flat beaches. All the way up, both on the beaches and paths winding up, were market stalls with colorful umbrellas and people selling vegetables, food, clothing – everything, really. It wasn’t for the tourists – we were on the boats – this was their society. A lot of fishermen were on either side, fishing. There were sandbars that the children would run out on. They would get very close to the boat. They were barefoot, and dressed in underwear. I remember one enterprising young boy, maybe 8-10, running along the sandbar holding out a basket, and people were tossing him money.

We did stop on one long beach and buy souvenirs and whatever you buy on beaches. It wasn’t just markets. All along the road winding up, you would see small temples and graveyards. Also, along the road here and there were the signs that would show the meters to measure water level, all the way up to 175, which was way up the cliff. The beaches were all below the 25 meter mark. It seemed like the villagers didn’t climb to the top; there were maybe a mile between villages. Only the lower part was terraced.

When we came to a big town that was going to be inundated, it looked like a war zone. They were building big apartment buildings up the top and people were demolishing their homes, trying to take as much as they could to the top. I don’t know how much help they were going to get from the government.

I can’t describe the war zone, it was what it was. We were appalled at the disarray people were in, and still living there.

The river was wild, yellow, turbulent water. There were fishing boats all over the place. The river was very narrow, channeled between the gorges.

Now, you go down, and you really don’t see many people on either side. I assume they’re all at the top. Now it’s all green. The little villages are gone. The temples are gone. It seemed like we were going in gorges with forests, not vibrant villages or communities.

The temples were lower, where people could visit them. The temples were gone, the graves were gone, the people were gone. The terraces were gone, except some higher up where the guide said the soldiers had built them.

I was shocked because I was wondering where all the people were, where were all those thriving communities that had been there for hundreds and thousands of years?

Lucky Indian

He gets around.

Our Four Legged Friends

This one's for Mollie & Iggy:

and Ramon

And this is for the girls

Note that the dogs pose and the cat disdainfully turns her head away....

Keeping in Touch

Our local guide in Chongqing noted that there are 450 million cellphones in China. Unlike the US, though, they still have a fine supply of groovy phone booths.

This One's for Jax (Guilin)

We spent the afternoon in the most extraordinary caverns, the Reed Flute Caves.

They served as an air raid shelter during the Japanese occupation in WW II; the central cavern (the Crystal Palace of the Dragon King) holds 1000 people, plus three.

Ok, so there were a fair number of rock-concert colored lights,

and the floors were (horrors) paved stone rather than natural, but the boys allowed as Jackie would have liked the caves anyway.

Here's Jeff's shout-out to our favorite spelunker:

or maybe it was this one: