China Trip Overview   We've had an overview of China as a country--its dynasties, the concessions, the early 20C wars. I know I wouldn't have understood everything about China I've been learning about, added to earlier knowledge, without knowing one main dynasty from another, and particularly without understanding the concessions, as well as what effect they had on the national psyche, and also how they led to the wars.

DESTINATIONS But now its time for an overview of this China trip specifically. Let's start with destinations. I knew little about China and its geography, but when going to a new place, I like to take in the big picture and take a look at it end to end. As examples, review visits in the last few years to Australia and to Japan and review for completeness—or at least for completeness as I like it. But China was so large, and I was unfamiliar with what I'd want to see.

The scheduled high-speed rail special-interest tour had on its itinerary Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Nanjing, Shanghai, Qingdao, Beijing (with Great Wall). I saw immediately that Hong Kong appealed to me, and saw the lack of Macau, but since I knew I'd supplement both Macau and my own visit to Hong Kong, that didn't bother me. The other stops that intrigued me were Shanghai and the Great Wall. But even before researching what was worth seeing in China, I saw two obvious destinations that were lacking. Xi'an with its Terracotta Army (and much more—it turned out to be my second favorite stop after Shanghai) and Tibet, essentially Lhasa. I have to admit in advance what it was that really interested me about Tibet, and you may disagree with this sequence: (1) the train ride on the recently-completed line to the "top of the world", particularly taking it as a two-night cross-country trip out of Beijing, (2) achieving the high altitudes of the Tibetan Plateau, and then (3) seeing Tibetan culture, particularly given the Chinese political situation.

On that basis, before signing on, I inquired about Xi'an and Lhasa. In a word, they were both added as separate optional add-ons. I was the only one that chose both, so that, of the two dozen people on the tour, two went to Xi'an afterwards directly from Beijing, seven went from Beijing to Lhasa, and of those seven, I was the only one that took the train back down from Lhasa to Xi'an. (I'm aware of one person making one additional stop on his own in China after Lhasa. All others left earlier out of Beijing, most to go home, some to continue travel outside China.)

A comment on guidebooks. I read recently that fewer and fewer guidebooks are selling, with more people looking up information on the internet. I agree that that's possible, but I question how desirable it is. As a matter of fact, before I got my guidebook, I was particularly curious about Macau, and extensive research allowed me to put together a schedule that I knew I could complete in a day. But then I got my guidebook for all of China, and substantiated my choices, but also added to it. I cannot see travel without a guidebook, one that properly ranks choices on some sort of star basis, usually three stars being best.

I have in the past had to use other books than my two favorites. The problem with most others is a lack of ranking. I won't name the others, but I get lost in those books which seem to list everything there is to see, without giving any guidance. As I've often said, my travel bible is the Michelin Green Guide. I could not have put together as pleasant a trip to Newfoundland and Labrador without its advice, albeit supplemented by online research. To me, 3, 2, 1, or 0 stars means something. It doesn't always mean I slavishly go to a 3-star museum if it doesn't interest me, nor do I leave out a 0-star location if it really draws me, such as something rail-related, like a historic station. But Michelin doesn't go everywhere, and Frommer's does (and gives star rankings), so I purchased a thick copy of Frommer's China.

A review of Frommer China was reassuring. In addition to its extensive listings with star-recommendations, in the introduction to the book it includes lists of favorites, two of which I found of significance. The major one is called "The Best China Experiences", and I would consider that to be a menu one should pay attention to. 14 items were listed, 8 of which I was definitely interested in. Let me go about it backwards. These, in no particular order, are the six that were of secondary interest to me, and NOT of enough interest to consider as additional add-ons.

They liked two river cruises, one on the Yangzi to see the ▲YANGZI GORGES (west of Wuhan), by taking a Three Gorges cruise, and the other a cruise on the Li River between ▲GUILIN and YANGSHUO (in the SW, NW of Guagzhou), with scenic views of weathered limestone cliffs called karst. They suggested visiting ▲SICHUAN province bordering Tibet to the east and visiting a teahouse, watching mahjong players, and listening to caged songbirds. They mentioned visiting ▲LIJANG (in SW, near Burma), where the Old Town has dark wooden, traditional houses and cobblestone streets. In the far NW they liked ▲KASHGAR in the Uyghur Autonomous Region for a Silk Road experience, strolling old neighborhoods with dusty alleys and mud-brick walls. And most wistfully for me, they suggested ▲HARBIN in the far NE for—no surprise--its Russian architecture and its Art Nouveau mansions from the 1920s and 1930s when it was a stop on the Transsib. These all sounded intriguing, particularly Harbin, but to my mind are more suited for a second visit to China than a first (not that I have any such plans whatsoever).

The remaining eight "Best China Experiences" Frommer listed were all in places we were scheduled to go, or in Xi'an, which I'd already added, so I didn't have to add any new destinations. Here they are, in the sequence I visited them, with preliminary comments:

While I didn't need to add any new destinations, it reconfirmed that I was right to add on my day in Xi'an, and showed me I should add the Xi'an City Wall, which turned out to be very good advice, particularly the golf-cart ride around the entire perimeter of the wall around the old city.

There were other listings in the introduction of "bests" in specific categories. The one that interested me was the list of 12 "Best Temples". include Jokhang in Lhasa and Yonghe Gong and the Temple of Heaven in Beijing. While the Tibet group was already scheduled to see the Jokhang, I could see that my extra day in Beijing should include the two Beijing temples. This is how I used Frommer to supplement the itinerary that had been handed to me. Online research gave me additional clues of what I'd try to squeeze in.

MY RANKINGS I've already said I personally gave Hong Kong and Macau each the top ranking, three stars. I should also include in this summary Taiwan in 2009, and I have to give three stars there as well. Take a look again at 2009/43-44, which took place as an extension to the Japan trip. The HSR train I took there (and also in Japan) was just as fast as the fastest in Mainland China this time, the Taipei 101 skyscraper was phenomenal, and the Jadeite Cabbage and Jasper Meat-Shaped Stone at the National Palace Museum were outstanding. But it was also in Taipei where I find I bonded to a Chinese city, even more than in Hong Kong and Macau—the wandering through the back streets of Taipei, finding my way to dinner at the original Din Tai Fung for the Xiao Long Bao (soup dumplings), and most of all, finding my way by metro and back streets to the Mongolian Barbecue restaurant I was looking for, a misnamed style that is not Mongolian at all, but Taiwanese, and not a barbeque in the least, but a Chinese stir-fry. That evening chatting (in English) with the Chinese students around that table was the most emotionally fulfilling I ever had in a Chinese atmosphere, and I recommend the reader review those two postings.

Now for the cities of Mainland China. I give three stars to Shanghai and Xi'an. I always had an interest in Shanghai, and after learning about the concessions there their influence on the culture, I was even more interested. Xi'an's Terracotta Army is a given, and the city wall and other stops I arranged to make that day were very fulfilling. Beijing ranks two stars in my book. I liked a number of things there, but the Tienanmen Square/Forbidden City complex disquieted me for reasons described later in the narrative. The Great Wall, which we saw outside of Beijing, is on its own three stars.

I count Tibet, as many do, as a separate country occupied by China. Since you need a special "Tibet certificate" to go there. the Travelers Century Club considers it a separate destination as well. The most enjoyable part, as mentioned above, was the high-altitude train ride to get there, as well as the high altitude itself. Lhasa, as a city, was enjoyable at two stars.

We stopped for a night in Nanjing because the director had felt (as he told me when I asked him) it would have been too long a day on the train from Guangzhou all the way to Shanghai, so he broke it here. I question that, since we were all train buffs, and since those of us going to Tibet would be on the train for two full nights. Still, the visit to Nanjing had its merits, but I give the city only one star.

Qingdao was also a convenience stop, since we were going to see a train car-body factory nearby the next day. It's a well-known resort city, yet apparently retains little from its German days. I give it one star.

Guangzhou, our first stop, is not a destination city. If you're not going on business, or for family or friends, it has little to offer. Our visit was for business, as the director had a bus facility he wanted us to see in an all-day visit. I passed on that (always the rebel), and went on my own to see something very special to me historically, Shamian Island. I say Guangzhou is pleasant enough, but rates no stars for the long-distance visitor.

IMPRESSIONS It's not your grandpa's China. I found it as modern and up-to-date in all ways, as much as anywhere else in Asia. Forget any old images of people in Mao suits. It's all "today". However, historic preservation of buildings and places, and restoration, seem to be very important, as we already pointed out about the French Roman Catholic cathedral in Tianjin, the Russian Orthodox cathedral in Harbin, and more, including Guangzhou and Lhasa. An obvious exception to this is Beijing, where historically, Mao tore down the Ming city wall, and tore much more down to build that blasted oversized, bloated, useless Tienanmen Square, and today, many of Beijing's back alleys, or hutongs, are rapidly disappearing. But away from that area, there were some very nice places and experiences in Beijing.

In the modernization efforts in Chinese cities, I feel there are far too many glass boxes going up, and very few of any substantive architectural quality. There are also too many far-too-wide broad boulevards slicing through cities--sterile boulevards with sterile buildings forming sterile neighborhoods. While there may have been some poor-looking farms that our train zipped by in the countryside, I saw little or no poverty in the cities, but that isn't saying there might not have been some. But in that regard, another thing is stating the obvious: there are too many people. As a train would pull into a city, while everything looked clean-cut and spiffy, there were lots of cookie-cutter apartment building complexes; new perhaps, but boring. And as to population, an ongoing joke the different guides told quickly got "old". While "that city over there" is big at 20 million, "this city over here" only has 8 million, so it's a "small town". Ha, ha. Guide humor. Actually, accurate in its way, but boring.

Another cookie-cutter set of constructions are all of the new rail stations, most of them on the outskirts of big cities as we mentioned earlier. I suppose some might consider them attractive in some way, but they have no personality, and for most of them, I couldn't tell one from another. They're all monstrously huge and all look alike. The best way I can convey the feeling I kept on having is that they all look like airline terminals. Can you tell one airline terminal from another? Or even one airport from another? That was the feeling I had with these rail stations. Nothing I saw was like Grand Central Station in New York or Victoria Station in London. The closest I came to uniqueness was at the main Beijing station and Beijing West station, both of which had pagoda-like towers on the main building, hinting at least that one was really in China. Other beautifully modern, but cookie-cutter stations, could have been anywhere.

I had no feeling about Big Brother anywhere in public, but as readers know, because I reported it on the spot, the internet was monitored. If I tried to access the New York Times website, I got an error message, also if one tried to research certain sensitive topics online. Reflecting the huge page-after-page visa form one has to fill out before leaving home in order to get a Chinese visa, the hotels kept meticulous records. It's been years since European hotels in most countries kept your passport for the length of your stay in order to keep police records up to date of foreigners' whereabouts. Now at most, clerks glance at your passport, if that. But in China, our guide had to collect all 24 passports in the bus before arrival at a hotel so she could present them to reception. It then took at least a half hour while the clerks photocopied the passports (my guess: both the picture page and the Chinese visa), and the guide gave them back later or the next morning.

Oh, and we had no names, we had numbers. For us it was our passport numbers, for locals I suppose their ID card. Therefore, our guide put a sticker on the back of each passport with our name and number for easier sorting. Also, whenever she got a new set of rail tickets, they had our number in place of our name. She told us that, if we were alone, we'd have to sit in the seat the ticket said our number was assigned to, but since there were two dozen of us, she said it would be OK if we sat with whoever in our group we wanted to sit with that day.

HOTELS Normally, I wouldn't have too much to say about a standard array of hotels, unless there's something special, such as Raffles in Singapore or charming bread-and-breakfasts in Canada and elsewhere. The tour organizers chose very comfortable, upscale, modern hotels in China, yet ones that I might not have chosen because of what I consider a poor location. Charm and location (rarely elegance) are the two prime factors for me in choosing hotels. Remember the hotel in Montréal I used, very pleasant, and located two blocks from the rail station, so I could make easy connections, which was the deciding factor. These tour organizers worked around the fact that our tour bus had to be able to access a hotel easily, and that also allowed them to choose out-of-the-way places, since the hotels didn't have to be near anything, because of the bus.

The Shanghai hotel was very nice with my top three-star rating, but located way to the west, far from the center of town, so if I'd been on my own, I'd have chosen something much closer to the Bund. Yet its location was interesting, and did have nearby areas I walked around. The Xi'an hotel was three-star wonderful, but really located in the middle of a "nowhere" neighborhood east of downtown. Walking in the neighborhood would have been of no interest.

The Beijing hotel, very nice and also three-star, was in a VERY upscale and non-typical neighborhood just east of the Forbidden City that suffered from oversized modern buildings and overwide boulevards. One evening I walked for about ten minutes west toward the not-too-far-away Forbidden City down a huge boulevard and only went a couple of blocks. At the beginning, near my hotel, I passed a Lamborghini showroom, also Mercedes, then Godiva Chocolates. Was this what I'd come to China for? The hotel's location was too international, too lush, too show-off-y, and I didn't like it. I'd have chosen elsewhere. But do remember, all these hotels were wonderful in and of themselves. I just choose differently.

In Qingdao we saw little of the city, and little of the old German influence. We even wouldn't have driven past the front of the European-looking German rail station if I hadn't asked about it. The very nice hotel, maybe two-star, was 20 minutes east in a residential suburb. Still, to go to dinner, almost all of those on the tour either hiked to the neighborhood shopping area or took a taxi. That was the evening that I had dinner with a tour friend in the hotel restaurant and the soup came in a "bathtub" (2013/20 "Dining in China").

The Lhasa hotel was a simple, two-story Sheraton Four Points, with a courtyard, maybe two-star. Some people did walk around in the evening.

Two hotels the tour organizers chose were unacceptable, one-star at best, and these were the first two hotels after Hong Kong we stayed at. The second hotel was in Nanjing, and was scruffy, and when I went to my room, the air conditioner had overflowed and left a huge puddle in the soggy rug at the bathroom entrance. I was given another room. Curiously, it was the only hotel walkable to a railway station, but still, we used the tourbus. The Guangzhou hotel, our first one in Mainland China also had frayed carpets in the halls and in my room, and both my double-pane picture windows had had their seals broken and were almost totally clouded up, making it very difficult to even see the street below. This hotel was well away from the center of town on the "wrong" side of the river, and at the intersection of two huge boulevards.

TRAVELING WITH A TOUR GROUP It's no secret I like the freedom of traveling on my own after making my own plans. I do what I do, go where I want. I meet people along the way, many of whom are very interesting and quite a few of whom are now subscribers to this website. Group travel is by definition regimented. But if the framework of the tour does essentially what one wants it to do (assuming one has checked things out and knows what one wants to do), one might put up with it. But for me it's second choice. I do not understand people who feel that having someone else lead them around by the hand like kindergarteners is really the superior and adult way to go. That's far too passive a way for me to travel. I travel much more actively, but I suppose that's no secret.

I cannot imagine giving a guided tour per se a three-star rating. The regimentation alone precludes that. But this one in China was a good two-star tour. Let me put it this way. The trip to Mainland China was three-star, the tour framework two-star. Does that make sense to you?

The destinations were fine, but as the director told me when I inquired, he didn't plan any of that (and wasn't all that interested in doing so anyway, which surprised me). He planned the technical stops, but only gave details at the last moment. Would we go by bus or train to a technical site? Show up and find out. I don't like that. I like to know what's going on. There were four technical visits in Mainland China. The first I didn't care for and exercised my right to play hookey (as the only participant to do so). The other three were worthwhile. The high-speed trains and maglev train he planned were excellent. We stopped at two railroad museums. I asked the director, and the Chinese hosts planned them into our itinerary, not him. The one in Beijing was excellent. The one in Shanghai was a total bomb.

I don't know that anyone else but me asked the director why he chose the sweltering month of September to go to China when the weather almost everywhere, even in the north (but not in high Tibet) was so unbearably hot, distractingly so. His answer was a revelation of plans gone horribly wrong (my interpretation). He not only wanted to see HSR in China for himself and bring along two dozen participants (which was successful), he wanted to try to get legislators, particularly in his home state of Illinois, to come along to China to see how great it was and convince them to vote in favor of HSR. Legislators were generally free in September before sessions started up, so that's why he scheduled that month. It was perhaps a noble thought, and he certainly meant well, but not a single one signed up, and so that aspect was a total flop. Only then did I realize (did any other participants also realize it?) why, at the last moment, all participants had to send in a résumé of their interest in rail. I assume the Chinese authorities had to be convinced that, if no politicians that could purchase Chinese trains were in the group, what use was having such a group in the first place? All went well, but weather-wise it was one of the most uncomfortable trips I've ever had. The only parallel was the heat in Singapore and Thailand in 2010, but right after that I flew to cool Australia for relief from the heat. In 2009, the trip to Japan and Taiwan was from late October to late November, and I had beautiful fall weather. On this trip, when we were in a sweltering, but beautiful large park in Nanjing, the guide said in another month it would have been equally fine fall weather in China as what I'd described to her I had in Japan. Oh, well.

While comparing latitudes doesn't fully account for weather patterns, these three Chinese cities are approximately at the same latitudes as these three North American cities. Even the northernmost of these cities are not known for cool summer weather:

Another problem is an exaggerated sense of cameraderie between the very pleasant guides and the participants. It seems like we're all in this together, out to have fun. But they're the rulers, and the participants are the followers. We do what they say. When I asked in Guangzhou if we could at least drive by Shamian Island (if not visit it) on the way back to the hotel, that was a no-go. It was out of the question in Qingdao to at least take a peek at the Tsingtao brewery if not visit it—but that wasn't in the plan. Pulling in to Nanjing from the south, I asked the guide if we could pass the famous South Gate in the city wall, but that was a few blocks "over there". Finally in Nanjing, while I had spotted the Yangzi River when the train crossed it earlier in the day, not everyone had, and someone asked the local guide if we could just drive a couple of blocks to the east to see the Yangzi in Nanjing. Her response was classic: "That's not in the itinerary". Try and argue that. When I later spoke to Wendy, our trip guide, about that, she said she admonished the local guide for having said that. But of course, the local guide was telling the truth. You're just not supposed to give that fact away to burst the bubble of "we're all in this having fun together".

There were four couples in the group, otherwise 16 solo travelers. I think over time I got to either dine or sit on the train with everyone in the group, so I got to chat with everyone, some more than others. Most had quite interesting stories to tell, but I sensed that all were quite complacent about having little control of what went on. Many were independent travelers, others liked tours like this. I was surprised when some asked where the hotel was located, whereas I'd printed out Google maps based on the hotel names that had been given us long in advance. One gentleman told me that if anyone would come armed with maps, it would be me—"but that's a GOOD thing!" One nice lady asked me with a smile "why are you so PERCEPTIVE?" I suppose some of us are more deeply into things than others.

The most amazing revelation to me was when I asked a gentleman I admired, who was going separately to Xi'an, what he wanted to see there. Since this add-on was build-your-own and not something pre-planned, I was sure he'd mention the Terracotta Army, and I was wondering if he'd added on some of the interesting extras I'd found, especially the Ming City Wall. His response to what he wanted to see was for me, classic. He said "Whatever the guide wants to show me". I do not understand this outlook. If you're trying to absorb a new location to make it part of you, I can't imagine a person would want to "be surprised".

Here are two contrasting examples of people I met on the tour. One had arranged one of those round-the-world flights with one of the airline alliances, and would be going from China via Paris back to the US. But he said that coming to China from the US, one of the stops he'd made in the Pacific was in Guam. When I asked what drew him to Guam, he said he wanted to eat at the Roy's restaurant there. My kinda guy! I've "collected" the excellent Roy's "Hawaiian fusion" restaurants in Tampa, New York, Los Angeles, and two in Hawaii, and he was just as interested in them!

On the other hand, there was the confused gentleman. As our train left Hong Kong and entered China, we had to fill out entry-and-exit cards so often done on airplanes. They'd just announced the number on the train we were on, but this gentleman remained confused, so I pointed out how to fill that number in on the card. Then I asked him what his flight home was. He didn't know. Where was he leaving from, Beijing, like most? He didn't know. He'd have to look it up. He's the type of person who NEEDS a tour.

AMATEUR PHOTOGRAPHY This is a ticklish topic when I bring it up, and most readers are not going to agree with what I say here. But bear with me.

Photography is a beautiful art. I've gone to museums to see works by Ansel Adams, Richard Avedon, and others. Beverly and I for years, as amateur photographers, took scads of (quality) travel photos. They were in the form of slides in those years, and even after culling, I have boxes of them. But then we stopped taking pictures, and for the last two or three decades, I don't even own a camera. (My mobile phone apparently has one, but I've never used it.) I get all the travel photos I need—really good ones--online for this website. On occasion, friends will send me pictures of me they've taken, including the one on the home page of this website. That's all I need. But go ahead and disregard this little quirk of mine. It's not the main issue here.

Next point: For those that like to take pictures, even those trivialized by those cell-phone cameras, I see only portraiture as being worthwhile. Take holiday pictures of family and friends, for instance. What passes for travel photography for many people I do not agree with. When I see a viewpoint or historic building I like, I savor the moment. People next to me looking at the same thing feel the burning need to record the moment instead of enjoying it. I draw a parallel between a tourist (you know I disdain that word) taking a picture at a series of stops along the way as being parallel to an animal that urinates on one tree after another to mark its territory. Similarly, the tourist has marked his territory with pictures he may or may not ever pay much attention to again. Here! I marked this cathedral as mine. There! That view now belongs to me. But you may also disregard this quirk of mine.

Disregarding both quirks, let's say we ARE going to take pictures, and we're going to be tourists marking our travel territory with a series of amateur photos. Very well. But this is something I hope all will seriously consider. When using a printer, we talk about a (vertical) portrait layout or a (horizontal) landscape layout. Please keep portraits and landscapes in mind when taking your travel photos. Either take a picture of the Eiffel Tower—by itself—or a picture of your wife sitting on a bench—or have her take one of you in front of a tree. But keep the landscapes and portraits separate. I get upset when people put themselves in EVERY travel picture they take, ruining what otherwise could have been a nice shot. What is shown to friends as "this is the Eiffel Tower" in essence is "this is me blocking the view of the Eiffel Tower". Most people do not agree with me on this. I've heard people say "I want to show I was there!" Of course, you were there. How else did you get the picture? Take a separate portrait of you sitting on a boulder. I've also heard "I put my friend in the picture to add interest!" If the Eiffel Tower—or whatever—isn't interesting enough in the first place, why are you taking its picture? Take a look at any of the excellent pictures I find on the internet to illustrate these postings—there are some below—and you'll see that the amateur photographers who took them did them as landscapes. Any people in them are passers-by who add to the ambience of the scene, but you do NOT see the photographer or his/her spouse in any of them.

I am absolutely adamant on this issue. When Beverly and I took pictures over all those years, they were quality "landscape" views, without us in them. If we wanted "portrait" pictures of us during a trip, they were taken separately. Now this affected the China trip on two occasions. When our group arrived to Tienanmen Square, I was taken by the setting, by its history, by the destruction involved in building it, by its gross monumentalism. I was totally involved in the moment, and not particularly positively. Then the group arrived at a point in the huge square that faced Tienanmen Gate, where a number of photographers were waiting. Sure enough, Wendy our tour guide started grouping our people together for a picture. I instead moved over to the side among some strangers, but then the photographer actually walked over to me directing me to join the group, and I refused. It was a portrait mixed with a landscape, and the mood of the location—it was overcast and to boot, was threatening rain (it didn't), neither of which helped, but I still had no interest in having any sort of picture taken. But the world continued spinning without my participation. That evening at the hotel, our tour guide had a stack of pictures in folders that were for sale.

It was one step worse on my very last day in China, which was my one full day in Xi'an, a beautiful sunny day, not too hot, that went perfectly, with one glich. It was a day that I'd arranged with a private guide, and it started with a visit to the Terracotta Army. It was a beautiful visit on a beautiful day, and just as we were about to leave the oddly-named Pit One, the largest, and main excavation site, the guide pulled me toward a waiting photographer. It had said on the itinerary that a picture would be taken here, a fact I brushed aside knowing I'd just skip it. But the guide looked at me incredulously: "But it's PAID FOR!" That bothered me deeply, since I felt I'd been tricked by the tour operator. There was no indication it had been paid for, just that it had been scheduled, since there was no breakdown of the charges for the tour at all, let alone for that last private day. The local guide's last words on the subject were that maybe I'd change my mind later, which of course I did not. My feeling of deception about this untaken picture is the only bothersome glitch on an otherwise magnificent day in Xi'an, perhaps the best day of the whole trip.

Day 2 (Group Tour), Part 2 We now continue with the narrative that we left off after Hong Kong (and Macau) in 2013/18. We had numbered the days on that independent trip up to Day 5, a Sunday. Monday was Day 1 (Group Tour) when we visited HK (for the second time for me that week) and we ended with Day 2 (Group Tour) Part 1, where we left Hong Kong from the Hung Hom Station (otherwise an MTR station) and crossed the border at Lo Wu into Shenzhen, on our way to Guangzhou (Canton) at the head of the Pearl River Delta, with Macau at its lower left and HK at its lower right. This is where I helped the gentleman fill out his entry card on the way as we entered what seemed like another country while it was still essentially the same country.

Guangzhou   When the HSR Express Rail Link (Map by Altt311), shown in blue and red, is completed from West Kowloon in HK, there will be HSR service from Kowloon via Guangzhounan (check your directional words—it's the South Station) north all the way to Beijing, although we'd be starting our own HSR experience in China at Guangzhounan (and only to Wuhan, where we'd change trains). The train we used from HK, shown in black, was the Guangzhou-Kowloon Through Train, the regular intercity rail service operated jointly by HK's MTR and China's Ministry of Railways. Twelve trains make this connection daily in 1h40, and it will of course continue service even after the HSR comes.

We arrived at Guangzhoudong--check your words again--it's the East Station (Photo by BV3CM), where we went through customs. While we of course had through tickets from HK, this is a pair of round-trip tickets (Photo by Ricky36) between Shenzhen on the border and Guangzhoudong. We reviewed a Chinese rail ticket in 2013/20 which mentioned Beijingxi, and I show this to continue to point out they really do say Guangzhoudong as well. That was a slower T train, this is a faster D train. And here's a further check on finding the day and the month. If you check the very first Chinese characters we learned in 2009/31, we found that the sun is 日, a squared circular sun with perhaps the horizon crossing the middle, and that the moon was 月, or a sun with two curves below indicating a graceful half-moon. Now find these characters on the tickets. You'll see that the shining sun also indicates the days/dates of the tickets, the 13th and 14th, and the moon also shows the month (moonth?), 12 for December.

It was at this station that we met the long-term guide that would be with us for the entire time from Guangzhou to Beijing, along with local guides in each city. (Those of us going beyond Beijing to Tibet and Xi'an would be on our own until arrival at Lhasa and/or Xi'an, where we'd meet a local guide as usual.) Her name was Wen Tong, but as is so customary for Chinese meeting Westerners, she also used an English name, Wendy. That works, although it's odd, since Wen is her family name. She was extremely helpful and a good guide. I also remember the name of the local guide from Guangzhou because it was so unusual. He wanted to be called Dragon. On further inquiry it turned out that his actual given name was Long, which translates as . . . Dragon.

We have two maps of Guangzhou, neither of which is ideal, so we'll use both and gather together the virtues of each. Copy and paste these in separate windows, then click to enlarge both:

We'll call the first the "pink map" and the second the "yellow map". Let's run through the pink map and then settle and rely on the yellow map. On the pink map first follow the rail line from the right to find the East Station, then note the large park at the top. Below the park, one destination we had is missing here, the Chen Clan Academy, but note the other one, the Temple of the Six Banyan Trees.

As for the waterways, do recall that the Pearl River (Map by Kmusser) is really three rivers with directional names that merge and intermingle forming numerous major and minor branches and channels, typical of a delta area. The entirety of this confusion of waterways is what is called the Pearl River. The Dong River (see river map) comes in from the east, but goes directly to the estuary and doesn't reach the city. Well west of the city, the Xi River has already come in from the west and joined the Bei River from the north. These flow primarily south of the city, mostly SE into the estuary, but with a major channel flowing directly south to the sea, west of Macau. It's only some smaller channels of this latter cluster that actually reach and pass by the city.

On the pink map we see the channels entering from the west, which then split again into an East Branch flowing east past downtown, and a Southeast Branch flowing SE into several channels, one of which swings east and rejoins the East Branch. (!) The area in between these two city branches is a huge island, which fills much of the lower portion of the map.

In the left center, note again where channels come together; the area on the north bank between the posh White Swan Hotel and the bridge in yellow is Shamian Island. Note the hard-to-read blue writing in the river showing that the convergence of these branches just before their resplitting is called Bai e Tan, or White Swan Pond. It's not a pond, or even a lake, it's just the junction that seems to bear this name. I understand that Bai e Tan is also the name of the riverside street on the SW bank that is famous for its bar nightlife. I assume the White Swan Hotel is named after this junction.

The bridge in yellow on the right is part of the Inner Ring Road, all in yellow, which surrounds Shamian Island on two sides. Follow that yellow road to the south bank—on the large island--and you'll soon see the Rosedale Hotel where we stayed, with my room of the clouded windows. The Rosedale is thus located well out of the center of things on the NW corner of the intersection of two oversized boulevards. Now: use what we just traced to imagine our C-shaped route through the city.

Now that you have that mental image, let's concentrate on the yellow map, which is also missing things, but is a little bit better. Find the East Station here at the top right. It was quite a hike in the oppressive heat to the parking lot with the tourbus, and once we got going, I had to again get used to being surrounded by right-hand traffic after the left-hand traffic of Hong Kong and Macau. Our first stop was one of those great lunches we had regularly, in a lush, very busy and popular restaurant in a park. Usually I know where we are at all times, but this location threw me for a loop. I can only guess the restaurant was in the big greensward that was more visible on the pink map but also partially seen here. Everything positive I said earlier about the wonderful, extensive lunches we had (oh, were they only dinners!) applies here, and I won't repeat myself.

In the restaurant corridors leading to our pair of private dining rooms I had I noticed one thing, and was probably the only one to notice it. All the electrical outlets were of the Australian V-slot type. I'd read that in China you find the American outlet shaped like an "11", the outlet that takes the very large British three-pronged plug (moreso in HK), and also the Aussie V-slot ones, but I was surprised to see just the Aussie ones here. Well, it interested me, anyway.

Guangzhou is the third largest city in China and the largest in southern China. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 12.78 million, while estimates of the population of the entire Pearl River Delta megalopolis run as high as 40 million. Cantonese is the first language for half the residents of the provincial capital Guangzhou, while the other half speak mainly Mandarin.

Now I've said that there's little to see in Guangzhou, at least, things that interest me particularly. Given the massive heat, it would've been best to retire to the air-conditioned hotel for the rest of the day, which I possibly would have done had I been traveling on my own. But tour operators can't do something like that, so they scraped together two stops, which were actually not bad at all, but which were at best one-star sights each, and we marched off to them faithfully from our tour bus.

Back on the yellow map, you'll see that, south of the park, it shows both stops we made, first to the left, the Chen Clan Academy (worded somewhat differently on the map), and then the Temple of the Six Banyan Trees.

CHEN CLAN ACADEMY We said in an earlier posting that the surname Chen is the fifth most common in China, and that the Cantonese variation is Chan, both forms being well known in English. It therefore shouldn't surprise that a landmark in Guangzhou should bear the Chen name. It's known, somewhat awkwardly in English, as the Chen Clan Academy, with variations, as on the map.

In the late 19C, two Chinese-American Chens who returned to Guangzhou proposed raising money from all branches of the Chen family for the construction of a temple to worship the Chen ancestors. This would also be an academic temple, a place for younger Chen family members to live and study for the imperial examination, the civil service exam given in Qing Dynasty China to select the best possible candidates for official administrative positions. the building, including open courtyards and outbuildings was then put up in 1894 from donations by Chen family members in the 72 counties of Guangdong Province, plus some overseas Chen family members.

But the imperial examinations were abolished 11 years later in 1905, and the building was subsequently changed into other types of schools, then a gallery, and now houses the Guangdong Folk Art Museum. The tourguide added that the building was saved from destruction during the Cultural Revolution by the staff placing large posters of Mao around it. This tactic saved the richly decorated structure, where beams, ridges, walls, and columns are profusely decorated. Among the art are wood carving, stone carving, brick carving, pottery, and more, with the purpose of exemplifying traditional Chinese architecture and decoration style.

Apparently the name is literally translated as the Chen Clan Academy, but that translation into English is awkward. Calling it a clan with clansmen sounds to me to be too severe; I like calling a family with family members. And various phrases come up for the last part: academy, temple (for ancestor worship), academic temple, ancestral hall. It was only an academy for a while, so that aspect is traditional, as is the temple aspect. The translation as "ancestral hall" to me seems to cover its traditional uses quite well, so I like the name Chen Family Ancestral Hall, as a respectful translation into English that describes the structure accurately.

By far (for me) the most interesting area was the main façade (Photo by David Chen—a Chen, believe it or not). Let's start low and click to look at the pair of the Chinese Imperial Guardian Lions. I had always considered these statues to be of mild interest, but the guide explained their function and style, and I've now become enamored of them. The subject will be explored by itself as the last item in this posting.

The rich decoration at the entrance and on the columns becomes immediately apparent, but the eye cannot linger there, since it is drawn quickly to the roof. This building is known for its pottery ridge crests, actual pottery on the roof, usually telling a story per ridge crest (Photo by Zyng1). Those two fish tails are apparently known as the "Flying Cod". Even the ridge on the roof of this covered walkway has pottery decoration (Photo by Zyng1), and click to enlarge this detail of some painted pottery on the building (Photo by 魏杲).

TEMPLE OF THE SIX BANYAN TREES In the Buddhist Temple of the Six Banyan Trees, you won't see six, or for that matter, any banyan trees, since the name is historic, and those trees are long gone. The temple complex dates from 537, but the main structure of the temple, the Flower Pagoda (Photo by airunp)(click to enlarge), was built in 1097, but restored several times, and was named for its colorful exterior. In the compact temple complex there are several other buildings (Photo by Fredlyfish4), one of which exhibits the customary statues of Buddha. Click to inspect the details of this building.

Both these stops, made in the blazing heat, were interesting enough, but as I said, Guangzhou is not a destination city in the same way that others are. But my interest in Shamian Island continued, and I asked the guide as we proceeded towards our hotel on the other side of the river if we could at least stop quickly, or if not, at least drive by, but—readers know the rules of a group trip as well as I do—the requests were rebuffed. (Actually, when I finally got there, I agreed, a clunky tour bus would never have worked on the charming narrow streets.)

On that ride, two announcements were made. The guide said that, for an extra fee that evening, there would be an optional Pearl River Cruise. I wondered what could be special about that when the guide announced that you get to see the Canton Tower, one of those monster broadcasting towers that so many cities now have, and also get to see the site of the 2010 Asian Games. I asked if this would at least pass Shamian Island, but no, it went the other way. None of this interested me, especially after the exhausting, hot day. But maybe ¾ of the group raised their hands to show interest, and took that cruise. Then the director stood up to finally—finally—give details about the tour of the BRT (bus rapid transit) facility he'd planned for the next day. I'd thought when I first saw the listing for that day, without details, that it was odd that he'd direct a rail group to a bus program. I'm all for all forms of public transportation, including buses, but it's rail that I came to see. Then, every thing he added made the day seem less interesting. He'd thought there would be something about light rail, but that wasn't so. He thought lunch would be included, as it was to be for all other visits to facilities, but it wasn't, so everyone would be on his own. This was particularly perplexing because I didn't want lunch in the first place, as I've stated, but rather dinner. Then there was something about riding bike-share bicycles between two bus stops (or alternatively, stay on the bus). What?! Ride bikes in this heat?! Finally, the day would be particularly long, from 9 AM to 7 PM, which would mean coming back in the dinner hour with little time to freshen up. On the spot, I told the director I wasn't interested, and wouldn't participate the following day. At the very least, I'd spend the day at the hotel writing in air-conditioned bliss—or maybe I could work out something about Shamian Island.

We arrived at our first hotel (after Hong Kong) in mainland China, where Wendy, our long-term guide, first went into the rigamarole of the collection of our passports to turn over to Reception as part of registration. This was the hotel of the worn carpets in the halls and in my room, plus my fogged-up windows.

This being the first stop, we wanted Chinese cash. The large "cash-from-home" crowd was directed to an odd machine in the lobby that actually exchanged currencies, but the rest of us wanted an ATM. Every hotel had one either in the lobby or outside nearby, and in the case of this hotel, it was "just across the street". HA!

You will recall that this hotel was situated at the crossroads of two major oversized arteries, so there was more to "just across the street" than meets the eye. The hotel stood catty-corner to its lot, so I first cut across the open plaza in front of the building. Then I had to cross the turn lane sending traffic from the cross-street. (Cross-street? I should say cross-boulevard.) I was then on a traffic island, waiting for the main road traffic to stop. In my mind's eye, there were six lanes to cross in total, so, taking my life in my hands, I made it to the opposite traffic island. Then I had to wait until there was a break in the opposite turn-lane traffic, and then I was finally on the other side.

If you think using a Chinese ATM is something formidable, you're wrong. ATM's are almost always multilingual, as was this one outside the HSBC bank, the modern British bank that had its origins in the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation. Anyway, you press "English" and proceed as though you were at home. I optimistically took out ¥ 300, then proceeded back across that gulf of a boulevard. It was also obvious to me that with traffic as it is, this was not a neighborhood to go out for a pleasant stroll in, even to find a restaurant.

Checking out dinner in the hotel, I thought it might be nice to look into the Chinese Restaurant, but looking at the menu, there were too many things that looked unappetizing, so I opted for the hotel's buffet restaurant for the first of two nights. It was decent, but many of the choices were such that appealed to the Chinese palate, but not the Western one. Still, I filled up my plate. When I got back to my table, I found that the hostess had left some grotesque, dead sea creature sprawled across a plate where I was sitting. It might have been a crawfish, or a local smallish variation of one with lots of spidery legs, but I was not at all interested, and I asked her to take it away. "Oh, but it's GOOD!!" she insisted, but that didn't deter me from my decision. The exact same scenario played out the next night with the same hostess, the same recommendation, and, for all I know, the same dead, sea creature. Still, there were plenty of choices I enjoyed at the buffet, not least of all, the dumplings, which are much more my speed.

As it turned out, the buffet didn't accept credit cards, probably because we were registered as a group and not individually, but I can't be sure of that. So I paid cash, and then realized that if that continued to be the case, I'd be short on cash. So after dinner, I once again did a roundtrip crossing of the Red Sea—which didn't gladly part for me--to the ATM at HSBC for an additional ¥ 500. One final stop in Shanghai at an ATM—also HSBC directly adjacent to the hotel--for an additional ¥ 500 took care of my cash needs for the rest of the trip. These are not large sums of money--¥ 100 is only US$16.50—but most things on this trip were prepaid through the tour.

But cash was needed for my taxi to Shamian Island the next day in Guangzhou on my day of hookey from the bus presentation. I'll describe this highlight of my trip in the next posting.

Chinese Imperial Guardian Lions   I had never given them a second thought, those sculptures appearing in pairs (Photo by Spetsedisa) such as these in Beijing, outside the entry to Chinese buildings of importance and status. They were just blobs of stone or metal, and very grotesque. But once the local guide, Dragon (Long) explained the full significance of the lions (in the blazing heat) outside the Chen Clan Academy (Chen Family Ancestral Hall) I had an epiphany of understanding and appreciation. The guardian lions are now part of my world. The following is based on what I learned that day, supplemented, as is everything else here, by my further personal research and/or opinion.

Why are they so grotesque? This is one of the items of my opinion, which I'll compare to something I learned in Art History Class at Queens College. Their ugliness is a form if idealization, not positive, but negative. Let's start by citing Egyptian art. These pictures (Photo by Daniel Csörföly) from Aswan, Egypt (click for closer inspection) show the human figure as portrayed according to Egyptian artistic custom. It was not paramount for the drawing to be representational of an actual human figure. The style of the era was to exaggerate parts of the body in order to display them to their best advantage. Start with the figure on the right, which is smaller, but the fact that it's standing makes a more illustrative example. It was assumed that the head looked best in profile, so that's how heads are shown. But it was felt that the shoulders and upper torso looked best when facing the viewer, so they're shown that way, even though it's unnatural and the neck would have to be twisted if people really looked that way. Finally, hips and legs were thought to look their best in profile again, and so we have Egyptian figures in this typical twisted stance. But again, the purpose was not merely to represent the figure, it was to represent the figure with all its parts to their best advantage. The same goes for the larger seated figure on the left.

We can describe Egyptian figures as idealized, to show them to their best advantage. But what if you wanted to show a figure to its worst advantage? Can we call that some sort of negative idealization? The guardian lions portrayed in Chinese art are meant to guard the building. They have to be fearsome! They're not portrayed realistically on purpose; they are not representational. It's their fierceness that will protect the building and the people therein, and this is done through exaggerated features. Bulging eyes are meant to scare you! (And evil spirits, too.) So are curled lips, impossibly oversized claws, a protruding tongue, a haughtily stylized mane. Everything about the lions is stylized, to make them look ferocious, to scare away evil spirits, with no attempt to make them look appealing. Once one realizes this, the whole image of the lion becomes more plausible.

But if you're going to exaggerate the features, what form do you start with? A point was made in German Wikipedia that wasn't in English Wikipedia, the fact that in early Chinese history there weren't any of these statues, since there are no lions in China. But as Buddhism spread in the 3C from India to China and included references to lions, Chinese sculptors had little guidance as to what these fierce creatures looked like. But they came to believe that there was a resemblance between lions and the dogs favored by Beijing (Pekin[g]) royalty, the Pekin[g]ese (Photo by Lilly M), here in a longhair version. Early sculptors then started to base their lion statues on the Pekinese dogs, to which they added the exaggerated features. Do you see a lion's mane in the picture of the Pekinese? In addition, apparently an alternate name for the Pekinese is Lion-Dog.

In Chinese the lion statues are usually just called shī, meaning "lion". This may be extended by the medium of the statue, so a stone lion, usually marble or granite, is a shíshī and a bronze lion is a tóngshī. It is also possible to refer to this lion as a symbol of success, so a ruìshī is an auspicious lion, as a symbol of good fortune, so a fúshī is a fortuitous lion, or as a protector of Buddha, so a fóshī is Buddha's lion.

I'm going into such naming detail with a special purpose. It's very common to hear in the West these lions being referred to a foo dogs (also spelled fu dogs). It's possible that "foo" is derived from the first syllable of either fúshī or fóshī, and we've just referred to the possible dog-image origin to the sculptures, but using the name "foo dogs" is very misleading and should be avoided. Calling them "guardian lions" is simplest, although it can be extended into "Chinese imperial guardian lions".

Since their purpose is protective, the description of "guardian lions" makes most sense. They've "protected" imperial palaces, government offices, temples, the homes of government officials, the homes of the wealthy. By extension, they also appear before restaurants, banks, and hotels. Since they are expensive, they are usually associated with buildings of the wealthy or elite, although in modern times, they can be made more cheaply and more individuals and business can afford them.

They always appear in gender pairs (Photo by 用心阁 / Yongxinge), such as these in Beijing's Beihai Park, a park that I visited, one sitting on each side of an entrance. To ensure their "beneficial" effect, correct placement is important, according to feng shui. From outside, facing the building, the male lion is always on the right, and the female on the left. Each lion's inside paw (the one nearer the opposite statue) is resting on something. The male's right paw (viewed to the left) is resting on a ball (Photo by 用心阁) , representing supremacy over the world. and thus power and might, and the female's left paw (viewed to the right) is restraining a playful lion cub (Photo by 用心阁), which represents the nurturing of the young, growth and well-being, and the cycle of life. As an essentially Chinese concept, the two lions are a manifestation of yin and yang, the female representing yin and the male yang. As to the building, the female protects the inhabitants and the male guards the structure. (For a review of yin and yang involving two aspects of something being opposite yet complimentary, see 2011/29, then do a Ctrl-F for "yin-yang".)

There are lots of online pictures available of the guardian lions, and I've selected a pair taken by two different photographers at the Summer Palace in Beijing (which I did not visit). This is one lion (Photo by Leonard G) and this is the other lion (Photo by Shizhao). Decide which is male and female, and which one would be on your left and on your right as you viewed them.

Another interesting point was made only on German Wikipedia, not the English version, about the lions' manes. Look at this pair of lions (Photo by Allen Timothy Chang) in the Forbidden City in Beijing. Since it's a profile view, it shows the manes particularly well. These being royal lions, they seem to have lots of locks of hair, but among other officials, the number of locks was defined by rank. The highest officials were allowed to have lions with 13 locks of hair in front of their houses, and with each lower rank, the number of locks allowed also sank. Officials lower than rank seven weren't even allowed to put up any lions at all. Of course that was then. In today's commercial world it seems every Chinese restaurant or bank is eager to set up a pair of lions at its doors.

I don't shop much when traveling, but on this trip, I really felt I wanted a pair of guardian lions of my own, in ceramic. I waited until my last day in China, when it would be easier to take home; it was a wonderful day in Xi'an where I had a private guide, which also made it easier. We stopped in the gift shop at the Terracotta Warriors, but they either had tiny, cheap looking ones, or larger, very expensive ones made out of jade. But it was at the famous Great Goose Pagoda in Xi'an where the gift shop had a nice, quality ceramic pair that I liked. They're each about a hand-and-a-half high, and wide, and long. She packed them in a cloth-covered wooden divided box for me to bring home on the plane. The only dilemma there is that the box is far too attractive to throw away, so it now lives in a closet.

Xi'an and the Great Goose Pagoda in it both owe a great deal to the Tang Dynasty, a cultural highpoint in Chinese history. My lions are new, but made in Xi'an in the Tang ceramic tradition. There are two unusual things about my lions. First, they're in BRIGHT COLORS! On entering the Great Goose Pagoda I had noticed the bright colors in the eaves and upper part of the entryway. Take a look at this scene in Beijing's Forbidden City (Photo by Irina Polikanova). Beyond the (obviously male) lion, click to enlarge to examine the colorful decoration in the eaves and upper doorways of the building. Look at the yellows, reds, blues, greens, golds, all blended together in a riot of color. These are the colors of the different features of my lions.

The second quirk of my lions is something that I noticed immediately, and it could have deterred me, but I liked the lions too much, and went ahead with the purchase. The cub is under the wrong paw. It's under the right paw of the female, just like the ball is under the right paw of the male. To boot, the cub isn't on its back, but reclining (which is a lot cuter). I was sure it couldn't have been a mistake, and that they knew what they were doing. And yes, this was corroborated once I got home and read up on it. I learned that the "appearance, pose, and accessories of the lions eventually became standardized and formalized during the Ming and Qing dynasties", but that in earlier periods, the form was quite varied. I am therefore assuming that my lions, being in the style of the earlier Tang Dynasty, include such a variation with the cub. This variation also makes the lions that much more of a conversation piece.

Guardian Lions in New York   Another epiphany struck me when I was back home in New York. We have our own guardian lions, but they're not Chinese, they're totally Western. Not only are they totally representational and not abstract at all, but there's no cub or ball, and their manes show they're both male. I can't swear that the architect had China in mind when he put two lions on either side of the Grand Staircase to the New York Public Library (Photo by OptimumPx) on Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street, but what other tradition can you think of where lions "guard" a public building of significance? Click to enlarge to see one of the lions.

The New York Public Library is the third largest in the world after the British Library and the US Library of Congress. When its Beaux-Arts building was opened in 1911, the two stone lions guarding its entrance were an original integral element, and have always been named. Since the library combined the collections of the [John Jacob] Astor Library of 1848 and the [James] Lenox Library of 1870, the two lions were originally named Leo Astor and Leo Lenox.

But as most New Yorkers who take their city seriously know, during the most trying days of the Great Depression in the early 1930's it was none other than Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia who, since he concluded his colorful radio broadcasts with the words "patience and fortitude", since he felt those characteristics described what New Yorkers needed most at that time to weather the period, also renamed the two Library Lions "Patience" and "Fortitude". (The phrase "Patience and Fortitude" also became a popular song in the early 1940's, sung by many well-known artists, including the Andrews Sisters.)

The Lion in that previous picture on the right (north) side of the main entrance on Fifth Avenue is Fortitude (Photo by OptimumPx), seen here in a closeup. On the left (south) side is Patience (Photo by GK12), whose realistic detail can be seen here particularly well.

Every Monday the New York Times publishes a column called Metropolitan Diary, which I've referred to before, in which readers publish anecdotes pertinent to life in New York. Just a few weeks ago, a reader wrote in about being on the library steps and overhearing a child asking its father about the lions and what their names were. The reader was sure he'd be experiencing a unique moment of hearing New York lore being passed down from one generation to the next, perhaps with a touch of LaGuardiana, but was mistaken. What were the lions' names? "Uptown and Downtown" answered the father. Oh, well.