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The Yin and the Yang
Facts: There are more school children in China than the population of the entire US. Yunnan Province is almost the population of the US. There are exactly one roll of toilet paper in the Peoples Republic of China and though I haven't sighted it yet some could argue that it is the greatest sought after tourist attraction. Almost half of the population of China are cultural minorities (other than Han Chinese).
I arrived to a few days ago and its been a magic carpet ride. The city of Kunming is at 1780M altitude and a very cool 16 C, (awesome after Bangkok's 37C inferno). Immigration was very formal, SARS exam and all... No forex's open so I hit a cash machine on the way out the door and got loads of Yuan, no problem. Many people speak decent Chinglish around the bigger hotels and hostels. The city is immaculately clean. I walked for hours yesterday and found exactly two pices of trash on the street (which were gone by the time I got my camera to take a picture...). That was about the number of white people I saw too. ;-) The food is awesome of course, half of it I can't figure out what is in it, but it tastes great. There is a beer that you mix from a plant you can pick, lots of mountain food and tasty mixes of grains rolled in pastes with exotic oils that they barbeque on grills. Oh yeah, they are crazy about the barbecued goats cheese too. People are extremely pleasant. Smiles everywhere and the few children that are here are awestruck by anglo looking people.
Somewhere here is the house of Zheng He, the eunich admiral that headed the Dongle expedition of 1421 when the Chinese developed latitude reckoning and mapped the entire world 300 years before the europeans. His maps are what Magellan, Cook, and Columbus used to sail the "unknown". A rudder from a flagship was recenlty found in Nanjing and it was 40M high. Almost bigger than the biggest ship in the western hemisphere. The Chinese imperial fleet that sailed that year was 1000 ships of teak, double planked, with cannons on the bow, capable of crushing the combined naval forces of the world at the time. So what ever happened to China then? The answer will soon be revealed after mediatation at the largest Budda in the world at Leshan in Sichuan Sunday, and Tibet on Tuesday. :-)
Laters
Joe
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The Surfing Buddhas
"A few hundred years ago a master sculptor was commissioned to take a small army of monks and carve out a couple hundred statues of his contemporaries in a single relief along a large wall. The statues are life-sized and so real in their depiction of emotions they spooked authorities and were mothballed and forgotten.
They are now at the Bamboo temple outside Kunming, so there I went for a Wave Zone photo opportunity yesterday. The entire background was blue waves with whitecaps and in midground and front were 70 some life size Buddas surfing on top of giant crabs, clams, and other animals. Their faces were vivid with fear, excitement, caution, exhiliration, meditiation....etc...
I did however, see no evidence of compression molding technology on any of the devices used to skim and surf. I did clearly see though that surfing and skimming were considered of the highest spiritual importance.
There were no pictures allowed so I tried my best to get in that WZ photo on the low. My vision was to launch a masterful ad campaign and ride it all the way to Hainan Dao. The monks were onto me though, as if they could read my mind. They anticipated every step and there was no escape. So, with visons of Richard Geres "Red Corner" in my head, I slid out the front and headed to Dian Chi.
On the Chengdu... Laters
Joe"
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Finding Your 71M high Inner Buddha
Chengdu part one, mission complete.
Went to a Sichuian Opera (fire breathing, circus type stuff intertwined with singing and music), Giant Panda Research and Breeding Center (held a baby Panda for a small donation), and the worlds largest Buddha (carved out of a mountainside 71M high). Pretty incredible stuff.
Half of the fun is making it around in public transport and trying to speak Mandarin with people. The sum total of my interpersonal interactions with the people so far add up to a strong personal impression that China is a country boiling over with possibilities. It seems the people can sense they on the verge of an economic explosion. It has one of my true marks of a great people, they don't talk about their culture and how progress is destroying it. They adapt. Like the Balinese, Thai, and others their culture is evident and it doesn't require lip service. Coming from Guam this is so refreshing.
I am in Lllasa, Tibet now and waiting approval for Everest Base Camp. The scenery is very similar to Bolivia and the Peru Altiplano, not much of a surprise as the Chinese established the Quechu/Inca Empire as a tribute colony. More facts: The Chinese discovered the moons of Jupiter 1000 years before Galilleo. They used them to determine Longitude for navigation and mapmaking. They also established colonies around the world by 1430 including North Carolina, New York, California, and comprised the bulk of the Inca Ruling party. They transplanted many crops into the Americas which made large scale habitation possible. They had a liberty port and trading post set up in Saipan, pre-1400's. And the punchline: Montezuma, the great Aztec Emperor was a Chinese Admiral. (All claims here recently proven via DNA studies and extensive factual evidence). On to the "Rooftop of the World". We leave via 4wd tomorrow moring early. From base camp we will hike to advanced Base Camp and make the call then. That is 15 -17 hours already so we will probably turn back then. Laters, Joe
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Diary of a Madman
On arrival in Chengdu I ckecked into a rather styling tour package to the "Yellowstone" of China: Jouzhaiguo and Hanglang National Parks. This involved another flight back up to only 3000M on the tibetan plateau. The tour is apparently unusual for anyone other than Chinese and being I took the 4 star option (a birthday present for myself) which landed me with a group of well to do Guanzhuo business people. There are many looks to learn in China and I am getting pretty good at interpreting the "you are the first white person I have ever seen up close" look. It was amazing watching them deal with a foreigner. Everything I did was a reason to gape in wonder including that I could use chopsticks with holding them properly. The communist homogeneity, cultural isolation, and economic puberty here is an explosive mix of social unpredictablity...
The park was the most pristine water I have ever seen. Limestone ponds of emerald green and radiant blue chained together down entire mountainsides, waterfalls, and perfectlypreserved trees underwater everywhere. There was an option for a dinner party on my birthday. They pulled me aside before dinner and said that there would be contests and they gregariously demanded I not "let them down". (yes they were very serous, its a Chinese male bonding thing... After arduous labor, not begrudging, I won the Chinese tug of war. So they brought me into the peformance and "married me" to the girl of my choice behing a veil. (picture included). When I got done the 20 mintute performance I was ushered backstage to clean up and when I returned to my seat, the theatre (200+ people) stood clapping and interrupted the show. There goes my 15 minutes of fame...
I think I better see a lawyer before I leave the country...
Corrections: The Chinese discovered the moons of Jupiter 2000 yeras before Gallileo...yeah sounds hard to believe... Half of Yunnan, not China are non Han Chinese....
New facts: The Maya were Chinese. The Giants of Patagonia were Mongolian. The Chinese had occupied New Zealand, South Island for 2000 years before Captain Cook arrived. Zheng He¡¯s Fleet in 1421 passed through the Red Sea - Nile canal and reached Europe. The Chinese had colonized Puerto Rico (DNA) since 1421. The Taino of Puerto Rico were Chinese. New Zealand was a Chinese colony founded for the extraction of gold and minerals. DNA tests show that in the Americas today there are 18 peoples whose forebears were settlers from Zheng He¡¯s fleets. These people have lived separate lives to other native Indian peoples from that day to this. Next: Chongqing and the largest Dam in the world....
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The Damned Yangtzee
Arrived in Chongqing, an Special administrative region of China...unusual in that it is the only one I know of that has so few redeeming qualities. Along with Wuhan and nanjing, it is one of the three "furnaces" of China where the heat hovers around 40C (105F) regularly in summer. Combined with the Yangtzee river it creates an amazing sweat of sewage that you can taste in the air. If you can find refuge, little fear, garbage lines the streets, creating an ever more sweet, pungent aroma that just tickels the palate. Thankfully the people are as sweet as can be, like the rest of China so it does make it so much better.
Chongqing was the Chinese Civil War capital of the Kuomintang, (non-communist, US backed party before the cultural revolution). I toured the prisons and it really blew my hair back a bit... all 5 of them... I hopped a fast boat (Hydrofoil) down the Yangztee to hit the Three Gorges and Dam (largest in teh world) and half way into the journey, the boat started taking on water. Drowning was not my fear, it was swimming through water I wouldn't flush my toilet with. We evacuated and had to catch the only ship available...yeah it gets better... a human freighter... A barge the size of Mahattan with people lining the hallways laying in mud. I got a quad room and got very very lucky that the family that showed up was only four others. They were from the hydrofoil, so they were a bit freaked also. I spent the next day teaching the daughter english while the Mom (my age) taught me Mandarin. The ship was a lovely 38C and sweltering. The beds were .5M wide steel racks. The rooms were 3m by 2m, mud everywhere. That was the nicest room in the show... The prison camps in Chonqing were the Waldorf Astoria compared to this joint.
The trips out to the bathroom were eye opening. For some reason it looked like trains of Jewish refugees going to a concentration camp. it was very disturbing. The captain kept tabs on me and sent for me to the bridge regularly. (down the hall). I have never seen hundreds of people at a time stop and stare as if they had seen a ghost like that before... Freaky.
I will never forget that family. It was one of the finest experiences I have ever had traveling.
It took amost 8 hours to make it through the locks of the damn and we were out to Yichang where I splurged for an air hop straight to Beijing. While we were in air, we hit turbulence and the flight attendants sprung up and started reviewing crash procedures. Apparently it is regular pratcice for turbulence on Hainan Air, but you can imagine the thoughts dancing through my head...
Ahhhh, Beijing, civilization... The good life... Rock and Roll.... :-)
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Drunken Boxing
"Drunken Boxing techniques are based on the legend of the 'Eight Immortals' of the Taoist Sect from Chinese Mythology. Each of the techniques in the Drunken Set demonstrates an attribute of one of the Immortals. The principle concept behind Drunken Kung Fu, is to move as if one were half drunk. The secret behind Drunken style kung fu is the sudden release of power from awkward positions."
On the way to Jinshaling, North of Beijing, to hike to Great Wall to Simatai, our bus was cut off making a left turn in the left lane - from the left ... The taxi driver who nearly capsized us, spun out and came to a stop causing a traffic freeze. He was so convinced of his right he got out and went into a rage in the middle of the road (a divided 8 lane boulevard). Our driver was a young wirey guy who looked like he had had a long night out with his buddies and had been too long without a cigarette. Yeah you can see where this is going... Forget about meditative face preservation and control of emotions. Apparently some things in the East are settled the hard way. The taxi driver grabbed our driver by the shirt and they wrestled back and forth exchanging their own deeply philsophical viewpoints on the accident. the guy just wasn't giving in... then it happened...The taxi driver struck first (we were all amazed as he was twice our drivers age, but he was much larger). He looked like he was dancing like a baboon in heat but landed a pretty solid one in the chest of our driver.
Battle in Beijing... Shaolin showdown. Thrilla in Manila... Our guy woke up and came loose at the seams. He danced around the other guy smacking him around, until he had him beside his car hood, then came down off his heels with a head blow that we could hear inside the bus over the horns blaring. The taxi driver hit the hood with a thump and staggered around for awhile, his eye was swelling shut fast. He looked as if he had calmed down and asked our driver to call the police. Our driver - still shaking- gladly obliged, walking away to dial... Then the bus driver tried to reach into our bus and grab the keys to throw them down the sewer. I was riding shotgum so I grabbed them and went to push him away when our driver came back for more.
Bystanders cleared the way and our driver took the chance to clear out. What a trip, it was not even 10am yet and we already got our money's worth. I got off a clear shot of the fight but when I turned over my camera to have the pictures burned to CD, both copies (camera and CD) were gone. Coincidence or Big Brother watching? Who knows in communist China... I plan to try to salvage the files when I get back to Guam.
God, I love this country... :-)
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It Sure is a Great Wall
"It sure is a great wall"... Richard Nixon, 1972 So we got to Jinshaling without further incident and made to hike to Simitai, along the least touristed section of the wall. These sections are unimproved, authentic and the most elaborate constructions along the wall. Some areas are partially disintegrated, many were near perfect, set against rolling mountians, lush green forests, sheer cliffs, rocky ravines, river valleys and such. Parts of the trek were climbing on all fours, straight up... really cool stuff. Hard to imagine troops mobilizing cannons very far. The hike was beautiful and I HIGHLY recommend taking the time to see this rarely visited section the the wall (it is 4 hours each way from Beijing). At the end many of us chose to ride the cable harness to the bottom of the river valley and take a boat back to the bus pickup point. What a ride... ;-) Hope you Fourth of July was great. Keep you posted.
More on Simitai: "Simatai is the only section of the Great Wall which retains the original features of the Ming Dynasty Great Wall. It is 5.4km in length, with 35 beacon towers. Ingeniously conceived and uniquely designed, inimitable and diversified, Simati incorporates the differing characteristics of each section of the Wall. Clinging precariously to Yanshan Mountain, this unique stretch is known for its steepness and ingenuity. Its steepness is simply because it was built on a precipitous mountain, but it also offers many spots that are unparalleled on other of the Wall's sections. Simatai's Tianti (Heavenly Ladder) and Tianqiao (Sky Bridge) are particularly dangerous unless one is safety conscious. If you suffer from vertigo, don't look down. You could be transfixed with fear. Simitai's ingenuity comes in where its many beacon towers are concerned. It is densely dotted with them, one pair of them being a mere 43.8 meters apart while two others have 600 meters between them. Other sections? towers were built at intervals of 500 meters. At Simitai, the walls are in single, double and trapeziform forms, the watchtowers being round or oblate with two or three floors. The roofs of the towers are also diverse: some are flat, some cymbiform and some domical. That the Simitai section is imposing and unique is beyond question, the more so in that it has limestone caves beneath it. Perhaps more interesting is that two springs called Mandarin Duck are at the foot of the Wall. The eastern duck is cold, its counterpart warm. The springs converge into a single lake, which means that half its waters are cold, the remainder warm. In winter, hot steam rises from the lake to form a marvelous spectacle."
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The Sleeping Giant
Last week I stood on the great wall and looked at what was once Mongolia. It ingrained in me once and for all that the Chinese are a people with immense history, technology, culture, and most of all, will. With all of the economic growth evident countrywide, I think really began to understand the scope of what is going on here. Touring the Forbidden City (with the Roger Moore self guided audio rig... puts a little spring in you step!), Summer Palace, and Tianamen, it was all there... The remains of one of the worlds greatest empires. To my Eurocentricall educated mind it seemed unbelievable that we never knew the immensity of China's power and culture at its height in The Ming Dynasty.
Now I am on the border of Burma (Myanmar) along the old silk road, looking at Burma, getting ready to leave China. The town is an amazing mix of hilltribes, Burmese, Indians, and Han Chinese, all doing their own thing. The Burmese smuggle in their stones, the Han market them, the Chinese tourists buy them, the Indians stay low and the Tribes provide the food with their farming. Highly ordered chaos. I really enjoy going places in China that white people rarely do, because the people are as intrigued by me as I am them. So many times I've walked into a restaurant and poeple all stop and stare, then they all have their children sit on their lap so there is room for me to join them. All this wonder about people who are from the outside. The wetsern mystique also holds promise i think in that they are driven to find a truly Chinese blend of modern thought that will carry them up economically. Whatever the reason, it really is a genuine warmth, compelling interest and openess I haven't seen anywhere else. Part of the uniqueness of the atmosphere is how cultured they are.
How did China wind up so backward and insular after being the dominant world power 600 years ago? Well, Emperor Zhu Di made a huge gamble for world unity under under the Chinese rule and it took immense natural resources and human life. Famine struck and a series of natural disasters (flood, comet hitting the Indian Ocean...), then lightning struck the forbidden city... Yongle (Zhu Di) lost control and the contemporary wisdom (and superstition) lead them to the powerful conclusion that China would turn inward and solve their problems. 600 years later and here we are... wow. I wonder if the US is prepared to share the world pie with these guys anytime soon...we may not have a choice soon. I am on the way to Chiang Mai, Thailand today and from there will tour through Laos then Cambodia. China was beautiful and I am already planning to come back someday soon.
I hope all is well with all of you and talk with you soon.
Joe
For all you history buffs:
1421 The Year China Discovered the World
Gavin Menzies
Published by Bantam Press, London
"¡On the 8th of March, 1421, the largest fleet the world had ever seen sailed from its base in China. The ships, huge junks nearly five hundred feet long and built from the finest teak, were under the command of Emperor Zhu Di's loyal eunuch admirals. Their mission was 'to proceed all the way to the end of the earth to collect tribute from the barbarians beyond the seas' and unite the whole world in Confucian harmony. The journey would last over two years and circle the globe.
When they returned Zhu Di lost control and China was beginning its long, self-imposed isolation from the world it had so recently embraced. The great ships rotted at their moorings and the records of their journeys were destroyed. Lost was the knowledge that Chinese ships had reached America seventy years before Columbus and circumnavigated the globe a century before Magellan. They had also discovered Antarctica, reached Australia three hundred and fifty years before Cook and solved the problem of longitude three hundred years before the Europeans¡" Where the story starts:
1421 February 2nd, 1421, The Imperial Capital, Beijing
Chinese New Year¡¯s Day 1421 was one of the most important in that illustrious country¡¯s history. At the inauguration of the Forbidden City, leaders of the world stood in line in a biting Mongolian wind awaiting their turn to bow and kow tow to the Son of Heaven, the Third Emperor of the Ming dynasty, the Emperor on Horseback, Zhu Di.
Leaders of the world had been brought from Africa, the length and breadth of the Indian Ocean, from all of Asia, in leviathan ships which had negotiated the oceans of the world with pin-point accuracy. No Europeans leaders were present for they were insignificant.
Six hundred years ago, China was a country, which was a political, intellectual, military and economic colossus. Rulers of the world modelled themselves and their countries on China. They were dressed in Chinese silk and ate off Ming porcelain. China¡¯s absolute dominance is epitomised by the subservience of the most powerful men in the world, the son and grandsons of the Persian emperor, Tamburlaine. At the inauguration of the Forbidden City in February 1421 their first attempts to bow to the ground before Zhu Di was not sufficiently abject. The eunuch Haji Maulana ordered them to do it again. The second time was also unsatisfactory. At the third attempt, the Emperor was satisfied.
China¡¯s standing can be illustrated by a comparison with London that same month. February 1421 was also one of the most important days in English history. By the Treaty of Troyes the Hundred Years War was to be brought to an end. The French heiress, Katherine of Valois, would marry the great English general, King Henry V, and be crowned Queen of England in Westminster Abbey. When the French King died, Henry and Katherine¡¯s children eldest child would become monarch both of France and England, uniting the two countries.
At the feast on 21st February 1421 to celebrate the coronation of Katherine as Queen of England, 600 guests ate stockfish - salt cod. Their plates were but slabs of stale bread. In Beijing, 26,000 people celebrated the inauguration of the Forbidden City with a ten-course banquet served on fabulous porcelain. Zhu Di¡¯s favourite was clothed in sumptuous silk. Her jewels included cornelians from Persia, rubies of Ceylon, Indian diamonds and khotan jade; her perfume contained ambergris from the Pacific, myrrh from Arabia, sandalwood from the Spice Islands ¨C its composition much like the most expensive perfumes of today. Zhu Di¡¯s walled city was more than 1400 times the size of the walled City of London.
The disparity in learning, knowledge and literacy was equally profound. In 1405 AD Zhu Di had commissioned 2,000 experts who had worked for 12 years; they could refer to six centuries of written wisdom. At last they had completed the Yongle Dadian, a massive encyclopaedia. In Henry V¡¯s England, printing was as yet unknown; Henry possessed six books of which three were on loan from the Nunnery of Syon House, whereas in China concubines could buy printed novels from market stalls.
England had no knowledge of the heavens. Chinese astronomers every evening charted over 1,000 stars traversing the night sky. they had predicted and noted the return of Halley¡¯s Comet on every pass since the year 200 BC.
In June 1421 England¡¯s King Henry would ferry his army of 5,000 archers to France in a few fishing smacks which could only carry 100 men and could only make the journey in daylight within sight of land. That same June, Zhu Di's army of 28,000 men landed in East Africa. The Chinese cavalry was armed with every sort of gunpowder weapon. A contest between China and all the world¡¯s navies combined would have resembled that between a shark and a sprat. Yet a century and a half later, England, not China, was to rule the seas.
The Chinese emperor commissioned 1,700 ships when he seized power in 1403. So much wood was required he had to pillage Vietnam¡¯s and Annam¡¯s forests of teak - which was to have disastrous consequences for China. China¡¯s fleet in 1421 was awesome - more than 1,000 ships. The largest, those which were to set sail in March 1421, were up to 150 metres long - almost the length of a Polaris submarine and three times her beam.
The junks were built in sections like the internal sections of a bamboo pole. The hull built of transverse planks of teak was double-hulled - if the outer planks were punctured by ice or coral, water would be retained by the inner. One or two compartments could be flooded without the ship sinking. They were semi-articulated, each of 16 sections joined to the next by a ring of brass bolts. The captains were eunuchs, their penis and testicles severed at puberty. The penis was cut to a stump, causing needless pain, infection and urinary discharge. After castration they put on weight - Admiral Zheng He weighed over 120 kilos and stood over two metres tall.
Up to 1,000 sailors, for the most part criminals, crewed each ship. Each ship had 60 to 80 cabins with sun decks and verandas for foreign potentates to use as they were carried between their home countries and China. Concubines, Tanka girls, served them - concubines were highly thought of with an important role to play. They took great trouble to satisfy their clients - books on sexual technique were widely available, as were sex aids and aphrodisiacs.
Water, grain and horse ships accompanied the fleet. Seawater was desalinated, using paraffin wax. Beans were grown in tubs, their shoots provided Vitamins B and C; otters were kept in flooded holds to herd fish into nets. Pigs were kept in sties and dogs bred for food.
The ships were protected by mortars, cannon and fragmentation weapons. The armada could sail the oceans of the world for months at a time in all weathers 24 hours each day. They used the star Polaris in the northern hemisphere to give true north and latitude. Their limitations were that they had to sail before the wind and had no star in the Southern hemisphere equivalent to Polaris. As we shall discover, the Chinese Emperor ordered the admirals to determine the precise position of the Southern Cross and Canopus to enable the ships to navigate accurately in the southern hemisphere.
On 3rd March 1421 the Emperor¡¯s signal to his three fleets set them on their way:
By the time the great voyages were ordered by the Emperor Zhu Di, China had more than five centuries¡¯ experience of intercontinental trade. Tang fleets had reached Africa and Australia. Kangaroos indigenous to Australia were found in the Chinese Emperor¡¯s Zoo, as were African giraffes and Indian elephants.
The five voyages since 1403 had become progressively more adventurous. On the second, the fleets separated at Malacca, the forward base. By the third, the forward base was moved further west to Calicut. On the fourth, independent fleets sailed from Calicut to the Persian Gulf, India and Africa. The fifth voyage brought leaders of the world to Beijing.
The tribute system meant China always gave more expensive gifts than she received. Thus countries were always indebted to China. The arrival of the great junks heralded costly offering of tribute to China.
At the time of the sixth voyage it was an era of massive self-confidence. China was Chinese again. Zhu Di had expelled the last of the Mongols. Leaders of the known world had been dazzled by the inauguration of the Forbidden City and the fabulous pageants which attended it.
The Silk Road had been reopened all the way to Persia. China¡¯s industrial system had been revitalised. Forward bases had been opened around the Indian Ocean. The way was clear for Zhu Di¡¯s greatest gamble yet - all the world was to be brought into Confucian harmony.
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