Naptime – Dazu
Even in a place as remarkable as Dazu, those who work there must get tired occasionally. 🙂
Chongqing – At the Point
Chongqing is situated at the juncture of the Changjiang (aka Yangzi, aka Yangtse River) with another large river coming in from the north. Steve took pleasure in noting that this makes Chongqing just about as much like his home of Pittsburgh as any other Chinese city might be — which is to say, not much! In these pics, you see him at the point, and then two shots actually taken from the ship on the morning of our departure for the cruise downriver: one shows the “point” where land and the two rivers meet, and the other shows the cable car that runs from the peninsula (central downtown Chongqing) over to the north bank of the Changjiang. There are such cable cars from downtown across both rivers.
Street Scenes – Chongqing
More scenes from Chongqing: not sure what the lovely plaster-and-wood building was, but Steve and I saw it as we wandered the city. The chicken in the doorway, with clothes hanging on the line, was on one of the side stairways leading from the upper, more commercial part of the city down to the lower port area, where goods entering and leaving Chongqing by boat are warehoused and loaded onto or off ships. Steve displayed a marked fear of all chickens he saw while in China…and given that most chickens in China live, like this one, in fairly close proximity to many humans, this led on my part to occasional amusement I must admit. I certainly hope I never end up regretting my good humor on this point…
Arhat Temple, Downtown Chongqing
In the center of Chongqing is an old temple (sorry, forget to check before posting this but my recollection is about 1,000 years old), around which the city has grown, as you see in some of these shots. I’m particularly fond of the shot with the woman on the cell phone, next to the incense shot: it has everything in it, from the clothes hanging in the residential parts of the temple to the high-heeled woman lighting incense while chatting on her cell phone.
Carrying things in Chongqing
Chonqing is steep enough that many of the bikes and bicycle taxis that carry small loads around the streets don’t work as well here. As a result, there are tons of guys with bamboo poles and strings for carrying items, all over the place. The guys with what look like shoe boxes was walking down one spoke of a pedestrian area at roughly the center of town; the noodle vendor was hawking his wares at the park on the point.
Steve and Paul at the Wall!
Oops still learning how this works, so these are posting before the text for them.
Hiking w/My Bro in the Hills!
My brother Steve was here for about three weeks, and just left Monday. THANKS for coming on over Steve! I’m putting these pics up right away so you can see them and remember what a great time you had. I’ve also been hearing from lots of people who’ve taken time to look at the blog lately, and I want you all to know how greatly appreciative I am: Aunt Judy who said my Bangkok photos are “gorgeous”(thanks!), Laura who wrote twice to let me know she’d been catching up, and that she loved the temple cat photo. Really, you can’t know how much it means to me that folks out there are reading these posts. Naturally I spend a bit of time to get it all together, and knowing you read it — especially when you tell me you are! — makes it a real pleasure.
As I’ve been writing this, I’ve also been listening via web to some of the news from the US. I hadn’t really thought about the fact that NJ and VA would be having gubernatorial elections, or that other places would have local issues and things. All I can really say is I’m liking what I hear. Steve’s visit pointed out to me that I have more anger and bitterness than I realized at the voters of the US, who saw fit to re-elect George Bush after he lied through his teeth in order to get us into the war in Iraq. I’m glad American voters seem to slowly be waking up from the long dream they’ve been in since 9/11, and realizing their “leaders” are leading them down a path to disaster. I just hope they remember this a year from now, and even more so three years from now, when it will really matter. Of course, I also hope there’s a good alternative available in three years also. Enough of my soapbox for now…but I remain happy I don’t have to be in the US dealing with the madness of this loserly government. 🙂
Keep your eyes on the blog — there are TONS more photos, from our cruise through the Three Gorges of the Yangtze River, and our visit to the spectacularly beautiful Wulingyuan Park in Hunan. Work’s busy after Steve’s visit, so it’s taking me a while to check out all the 212 photos I took, but soon enough a bunch (not all 212, I promise) of them will be up here. Love y’all, and thanks again, Steve and everyone!
The Great Wall – Hills North of Beijing
Steve said he was glad he saw the wall first in its more natural state, not in perfect repair in the hills north of Beijing. Toward the end of his trip, he went to Badaling, where the massive HORDES of tourists are ever-present. This was a quieter, more natural way to see it, I hope.
Since Steve didn’t know, I’ll point out for all of you that the wall stretches thousands of miles, from deep inside China — well into Gansu Province — to the Atlantic coast a few hundred miles east of Beijing. And all the wall sections around Beijing seem to be incredibly steep, and to weave artistically up and over the gorgeous, steep hills of the countryside north of BJ.
Getting Ready for Winter
Piles of chestnut hulls, and firewood piles in the background. Everywhere we went, we had a sense that people were getting ready for winter: in the next set, you’ll see piles of corn laid out to dry in a courtyard , presumably to feed animals for the winter. I love the idea that folks take good enough care to keep the chestnut hulls as kindling for fires: that’s good stewardship of resources, huh?
Village Life North of Beijing
More shots of small villages we passed through. The woman and child were selling small booties or slippers, handknitted with animal patterns on the top. Nola, an engineer from Canada that I’ve hiked with a few times, took this picture after buying booties from the woman. I hope she won’t mind me using the shot, since she used my camera!
With the two kids running in front of the man, look carefully and you’ll see the guy behind is wheeling a whole bunch of kindling and firewood up the slope, presumably to his house. Don’t think this is for romantic fires: as you saw from the chestnut hulls just before, this may be life and death for them when the weather gets colder.
Flowers and Towers – Village Life
Now that I can access the website from online, I’m going to try some new manners of posting, which might lead to better-looking photos. We’ll see how this works!
These two photos show scenes of small villages near the Great Wall that we passed during our hike — with the watchtowers of the Great Wall on the hills in the background. One village was a garrison village, where the company that worked the wall rested during their off days and hours.
Bangkok Skyline
For those who’ve not yet read the long text entry I wrote a few days (which appears further down on the blog), I’ve just (on Saturday the 15th) returned from a week in Bangkok, which was mostly for a seminar with MSF, but I tacked a weekend and another free day to see the city. On my last day, after the class, I was able (thanks to Tony’s car and driver — yay, Tony!) to tour a bit of the city with the teacher from our class, a very interesting French woman of Tunisian ancestry who’s worked with MSF for a while now, currently on this project and previously on Tsunami relief in eastern Sri Lanka among other things. To get a view of an older Bangkok, we rented a small motorboat for an hour’s tour through some of the smaller canals that have not (yet?) been paved over. This shot shows the skyline from the main river, which is a very busy shipping and commercial channel.
Bangkok Waterfront Life
This man was clearly at work on his boat — I’m not sure what his work is, but it’s tied to the river. Please note that he’s in the middle of a metropolis of 8 million people that’s really quite modern and very polluted…but as you’ll see in some of the next shots, the Bangkok of canals and rivers still seems to run at a slightly different pace than the one of the streets and shopping centers.
Spirit Houses
It seems every (Buddhist, at least) home in Thailand has a spirit house just outside. These are to attract good spirits, and keep the unfriendly ones at bay. Of course the stilt houses in the canals are no exception — it’s the mini-temple looking thing in the upper right side of the shot.
Laundry on the Line
Along the canals you see grand and glorious houses, small shacks, and everything in between. They all have in common the laundry hung out to dry. None of that anglo-saxon discomfort with laundry here, nor the waste of energy when the sun dries the clothes much more ecologically!
(so much world, so little time....) 