March 31, 2016

March 31   leaving the Viking Emerald, visit Pandas and fly to Xi’an

   Sometime early in the morning the ship docked in Chongqing.  It is a large municipal area of 34 million people. It is known as the “Mountain City ”, since it is between the Yangtze River and the mountains, but also it is called “Fog City” and there was a haze near the river, but sunrise was just at 6:35. Chongqing was founded over 400 years ago. After the Opium Wars in 1846 and 1860, Chongqing was a treaty port for both the British and Japanese.  It was heavily bombed by the Japanese in the 1940s as it was Chiang Kai-chek’s Chinese capital city in the early 1940s.  It was not until the 1990s that ferries were replaced by bridges.  There are over 20 bridges over Chongqing’s two rivers today. 

     The temperature was about 15 C.  We had an early start today. By 5:40 a.m., we paid the onboard bill which included my Chinese jacket and the tickets for the April 1 Tang Dynasty show in Xi’an.  By 6:30 we were checked out of the Viking Emerald and waiting in the lobby for the group to gather. The bus was parked on the road that was up 82 stairs from the pier. The pier, which was about 300 meters from the ship, was accessed by a narrow floating dock, which passengers were crossing in one direction, at the same time as several delivery men, with their boxes suspended by rope attached to a pole that they carried slung over their shoulders, pushed their way toward the ship from shore. No one fell in the water.

   Our group was introduced to our guide, David, and was on the way to the Chongqing Zoo by 7. By 8 our group had arrived at the Giant Panda enclosure at the zoo and watched them happily chew on their bamboo breakfast for 15 minutes and took a quick look at the area.  The park like grounds, covering over 111 acres, had groups of people doing tai-chi, group exercises, games of badminton and group dancing along the pathways. It was Thursday, but people were getting their exercise. The washroom facilities close to the Panda enclosure were the Chinese squat style toilets, so most of the ladies waited for the Western style toilets at the airport.  We arrived at the airport in plenty of time for the 11 a.m. flight. By flight time the sun had partially broken through the cloud. Mr. Gao gave everyone their passport and boarding passes.  Our luggage had been sent ahead earlier in the morning.  We were flying Capital Airlines to Xi’an and passengers were transferred from the boarding gate to the airplane by a 6 minute shuttle bus journey and we walked the movable truck based stairway into the plane.  The flight was about 60 minutes over several Chinese mountain ranges.  After our baggage was identified, it was sent on to the hotel while our group and Joshua’s group went for lunch at the buffet restaurant in Xi’an’s terminal 3.  There we met two Viking groups of about 30 who were going to catch a flight later in the afternoon to Chongqing to start their river cruise and terminate the trip in Shanghai.  The drive into Xi’an was about an hour.  The luggage had arrived before us.  As Mr. Gao checked the group into the Hilton Xi’an, our luggage was being delivered to our rooms.  We had walked 3.2 miles for the day.

   Shortly after 4, we were out to explore Xi’an. We asked at reception for a map and were given a stylized map showing in a general way the location of some sites in relation to hotel. Later we found out that it missed a lot of street names and really was a very general map. Xi’an was a capital during the time of the Silk Road and was known Chang’an, which was the eastern end of the trade road.   It was the capital city for about a dozen Chinese Imperial dynasties. The city was its greatest during the Tang dynasty.  Xi’an’s history goes back over 3,100 years, it rivaled the civilizations of Egypt and Greece.

   Our destination was to find the moated Xi’an City Wall and stroll along it.  The wall was a short 10 minute walk with another 10 minutes to get to the ticket office to buy  54¥ tickets for walking on the reconstructed ancient city wall which is over 13 km around. We walked from the East Gate, known as Changle Gate and around to the minor gate, known as Wenchang Gate, just before the South Gate, known as Yougning Gate. The wall was originally built initially during the old Tang Dynasty (618 – 907). It was one of the largest ancient military defensive systems in the world. The first Ming dynasty Emperor, Zhu Yuanzhang, enlarged the wall in the late 14th century and it was renovated in the 1980s. The wall is now stands 12 meters (40 feet) tall, 12-14 meters (40-46 feet) wide at the top and 15-18 meters (50-60 feet) thick at the bottom. It covers 13.7 kilometers (8.5 miles) in length Every 120 meters, there is a rampart which extends out from the main wall. Plus there are 98 ramparts, which were built to defend against the enemy climbing up.

    Along the wall route we read that on a street in the old city was where former Chairman Mao had meetings in 1936 with Chiang Kai-chek to consolidate the two Chinese rivals in their fight against the Japanese who had invaded China’s Manchuria area.  When we took some stairs back down to the street level we saw, but did not go in to, the building housing the Beilin Museum, is a themed museum focusing on displays of stone steles, epigraphs and stone sculptures from past dynasties.  We followed a neighbourhood road and there was an outdoor market occurring with stalls of vegetables, fruit, jewellery, clothing and toys on several streets. This area is known as the Shuyuanmen Ancient Cultural Street.  We finally got to Yougning Gate. On our way to the Bell Tower, because the map was not very specific, we turned down a street and found the Tang Dynasty Baoqing Temple Pagoda and photographed it.  It was after 5 and the temperature was about 25 with sunny skies.  We reached the site of the Bell Tower – in the center of a five lane roundabout – and figured out that we needed to use the underground tunnel system to find the Bell Tower entrance.  When found the ticket office the cost to see the Bell Tower was 35¥ (about 7.50 Cdn $) each or 50¥ (about 10.75 Cdn $) if we combined the ticket with an admission to the Drum Tower about two blocks away, so we did.  The views of the old and new buildings from balconies of the higher reaches of both structures were grand. A little surprise occurred when we were climbing the 63 stairs to the main entrance of the Bell Tower.  We waited for a young family to take their photo then, with gestures, they asked us to be in the picture with them.  We did and they were happy to have a picture with non-Chinese people.  The group is always warned of scams when we leave the tour guide, but this was just a normal request. A favourite view was seeing the lights light up the Bell Tower at sun set from the Drum Tower.

    On the central axis of the city in 1380, in order to mark the centre of the city the Drum Tower was built with a combination of Tang and the Qing Dynasty architectural styles. There is no iron nail used anywhere in the Tower.  Then in 1384 the Bell Tower was erected. But, in 1582, the Bell Tower was moved 1,000 meters (3,280 feet) east of the original site to move it to the new geographical centre of the city. Except for the base, all parts are original. The engravings on the doors recount popular stories of Ming and Qing Dynasties.  On each side of the base, there is an arched door 6 meters (19.6 feet) high. In the past, vehicles were allowed to pass through the arches, but as the city has grown the volume of traffic has greatly increased, it now accessed by a pedestrian subway has been constructed under the tower. Originally, the northwest corner of the tower housed the Jingyun Bell from the Tang Dynasty.  Both of the Bell Tower & the Drum Tower are called the 'sister buildings' or 'morning bell and dark drum'. In ancient China, especially from the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368), the drums were used to signal the running of time and on occasion were used as an alarm in emergency situations.

   There was another street market taking place north of the Drum Tower.  Looking from the Drum Tower’s East balcony you could see the beautiful garden in the area between it and Bell Tower.  There different kinds of bushes and thousands of brightly coloured yellow, red and purple flowers. 

  As the sun set, about 6:45, we decided to continue straight down Chang’an Road and turn east at some point to return to our hotel.  Due to the map being out of scale and listing very few street names and street name signs being hard to find, we navigated down a number of streets not listed and lost our sense of direction.  To make matters worse, the few two hotels we asked for assistance had staff that did not understand English, but at the Ibis, we breathed a sigh of relief and were told the Hilton was more than a mile away.  We had walked over 12 miles and were sick of walking, so we got a cab and in five minutes were pulling in front of the Hilton.  Our cab driver has all the skills to drive in any of the Chinese cities that we have visited or even Istanbul, Turkey – drive, watching for all the thousands of cars cutting you off and if you need to make a left turn to get someplace, even in the middle of  a street, look and go! The cab was paid 20¥ (about 4.25 Cdn $) which was double the fare, since we were glad to get back before the hotel’s buffet restaurant closed at 9:30.  It was almost 9 p.m.  The buffet meal was just what we needed to chill with a beer and give our feet a rest.  We really got to see many streets of the interior of the old Xi’an City Wall.  By 10 we were ready for bed having walked just shy of 13 miles today.