The A380

Kay is excited by planes. She was at the Sydney airport today to watch the arrival of the first commercial Airbus A380 flight - Singapore Airlines' flight SQ380. Here's a link to her video clip :

I took the lazy way - stayed home and watched it live on Sky News.

Big Buddha and Hot Pots

At Leshan city, 140 km outside Chengdu, overlooking the confluence of Min and Dadu Rivers stood the 8th century 71 metre high Buddha carved out of the side of a cliff. We viewed the imposing statue from one of the many flimsy riverboats, reassured by the loosely fitted life-vests issued to each of us. We were told not to overload the top deck when viewing the Buddha.



No visit to Sichuan is complete without a sampling of its Hot Pot. Chilly is the backbone of Sichuanese cuisine so the "hot" refers not just to the temperature of the dish. Our guide Ling took us on a tortuous journey to her specially selected restaurant to sample the dish. Even our resident Peranakan Jessie thought the spice was somewhat overdosed, but it was a fitting finale to our journey.

Chengdu (2) Pandas

Of course most people come to Chengdu in Sichuan province to see the pandas. The Panda Research Park is a beautiful setting to display the endangered animals and show to the world what the Chinese government is doing to protech them.

Giant Pandas

A Red Panda

Video clips of Giant and Red Pandas

PETER'S LETTER (6)

Hi Gang and devoted readers,

Have just had a great evening out here in Chengdu. We prevailed upon our lovely local guide, a self-proclaimed Chengdu “Spicy Lady”, to take us to a Hot Pot restaurant and have been treated to a very Schezuan meal of every thing done in steaming stock complete with chilli chilli and extra chilli! Thankfully there is a centre section un-chillied that you can use and then dip into the chilli mixture if so moved. I fear that everything that moves through my system within the next 24 hours will be somewhat fiery. Still, a small price for a great National Day out!

Literally millions of people out and about today, not taken to waving the red flags or chanting holding the little red book, but just representatives of the new and affluent China making the most of public spaces and the first day of their week off. I must say that apart from the nuisance o traffic congestion and crowded walking there is a great plus of being in the presence of warm and friendly humanity. Sometimes travel does quite a bit to negate the innate racism that is in all of us.

So, we’re finally back to the lowlands and I must say that I am feeling a much better person for it. Keir thinks that he wasn’t greatly affected by the altitude and he certainly didn’t slow down any. The Lord Buddha must smile on the good! The train trip was a very enjoyable though the others in the group said that it didn’t live up to the expectations of a great tourist train. Perhaps I wasn’t expecting that, certainly very clean, comfortable and smooth running. The dining carriage was overpriced, serving un-inspired food for which there was no menu available to foreigners but there was to the locals. I decided that it is essentially designed for the locals so they haven’t quite worked out how to cater to those contrary Westerners who demand more. Keir and I shared our 4 berth cabin with a lovely young couple of Hong Kong Chinese who spoke good English and were interesting objects for Keir’s tales of everything that happened since childhood. No, not really, they laughed a lot and seemed to enjoy the trip as much as we did.

The scenery is spectacular in that high plains semi-desert way- treeless for most of the Tibetan section and as we climbed to about 5075m you can understand how no self-respecting tree would live there. Beautiful snowcapped peaks on the 'horizon and the occasional freshwater lake and rubble-strewn streams that obviously carry plenty of water after the spring melt. Lots of yaks and nomadic herders though complete with motorcycles and their modern versions of yurts (tents). Colour if not a great deal of movement as we rattled along under 100km/hr. The railway itself is a modern marvel of engineering, all sorts of special construction to combat the effects of the cold and the permafrost in the subsoil. Plus environmental things like allowing for the annual migrations of the antelopes and not destroying the local ecology. Nice to see the Chinese sensitive to these things.

Arrived in Xining on time and were whisked away to a hotel for a couple of hours to clean up and change and then to another of the daily big meals. This one was interesting as it was in a Muslim place and something of a change from Tibetan fare. Not a yuk butter smell within range of my nose!. The guide was kind and competent and at his suggestion we took in a local museum which was extremely good. The couple of exhibitions we saw dealt with weaving and the Tibetan religious objects that we’d been seeing in situ for th last week. At least this time it made more sense cause they had labels and the gallery expert was very informative about the detail. All through the interpreter of course but it was good to have it make some sense. Not sure that can understand 1% of what Tibetan Buddhism is supposed to be but in my next life as an insect I might get some insights!!

We also wandered the streets of the modern city with lots of locals out for the day- the usual colourful markets and stalls plus a very grand public plaza where kites were flying and some sort of National day stage was being prepared with banners and suchlike. Great on spectacle still. In the evening we flew to Chengdu on an excellent Air China A319 flight. Just over an hour and a full aircraft but nothing to complain about in any way. I think that the foreigners who come for the Beijing Games might all be pleasantly surprised if they have the same flying experiences as we have had. We have 2 more flights to make so let’s hope that my praise doesn’t come back and bite me!!

Tomorrow is visit the Pandas day…all go awww gee, how sweet! Still one has to do these sort of things if only so you can say that they smell bad or have bamboo breath or rally are all cute and cuddly. In the afternoon we are going to see a statue of The Great Buddha. And you didn’t even know that Buddha was from Queensland did you? I have seen one in Kamakura in Japan which was impressive but this is bigger and doubtless comes with more blessings/ credit points. I can’t imagine the Chinese being as devout as the Tibetans so I might be spared the smell of y.b. After today’s outings to a couple of shrines and places habited by ancient poets I am expecting nothing but pleasant parks and suitably impressive architecture of old China. I do sometimes wonder what the China of a couple of centuries hence will have to show the tourists…concrete motorways and apartment buildings.

Love to all from us both,

P

Chengdu (1) Culture and History

We flew from Xining to Chengdu in Sichuan province. By comparison, Chengdu is a bustling modern metropolis complete with traffic chaos, an underground mass rapid transit under construction and of course pollution.

But Chengdu prides itself as an important centre in the history and literature of China. Our first stop was the shrine to Zhu Ge Liang, a main protagonist of the Three Kingdoms period.



Of course, conveniently located next to it was a new old-style shopping street.


The next stop was the beautiful garden set up in memory of the Tang poet Du Fu.

To Xining in Qinghai Province

As the train left the Tibetan plateau the next morning, we were breathing much easier, perhaps even on a oxygen-rich high.

The scenery gradually became more typical of Han China, with terraced agriculture and deciduous forests.

Xining, the capital of Qinghai Autonomous Region, was greatly undersold by our Guangzhou agent who described it as a "nowhere" town. We found instead a reasonable size city with an obligatory city square drabbed in national colours (being China's National Day the following day) and surrounded by relatively modern buildings with departmental stores. What's more, the museum had a rich and well presented collection of Tibetan artefacts.

But we had to seel the refuge of KFC before we could find a cup of coffee.

Lhasa-Xining (2) The Scenery

Before I came on the trip I had expected the Tibetan plateau to be a boringly flat plain of high altitude most famous for the engineering of the railway that runs over it. What we found was something quite different.

The scenery was picturesque;

occasionally bare but for the railway line . . .

. . . but with striking colours and hues . . .

. . . a dry land sometimes laced with clear mountain streams . . .

. . . with a backdrop of distant snow-capped mountains . .

. . . yet elsewhere we saw patches of sandy desert . . .
. . . but mostly grassland with grazing yaks . . .
. . . watched by herdsmen and railway workers . . .
. . . when our eyes were not on the info display.

Lhasa-Xining (1) How China built a new railway

We heard much about the newly completed railway which in parts rest on subsoil permafrost and runs at altitudes higher than 5000 m above sea level. This new link for Tibet to the rest of China raises environmental and cultural concerns for some but for others it promises to bring much for the future development of Tibet. We found the train surprisingly ordinary. Perhaps the intention was not for a luxury style travel for tourists but economical transportation for the masses.

Nowadays China does everything in a big way. The massive Lhasa Station has a grand entrance hall . . .

. . . . . and an equally spacious plateform . . . .

. . . and very soft seats in the soft-seat lounge .

The locos looked surprisingly similar to the thousands all over China . . .

but the bus interchange was the biggest we have ever seen.
Inside, it was just like any other carriage, but neat and clean .
. . . with unusually modern wash basins . . .
. . . and bright dining cars which turned out to be more for the staff because we were eventually asked to leave so that they could have their dinner. After all it was the Workers' Paradise.


For all of us, the greatest comfort was from the oxygen enriched atmosphere.

Faces of Tibet

Monks Debating

None of us had expected that watching monks debating would turn out to be so absorbing. We understood not one word of what they were saying and little of their religion. Nevertheless, at the Sera Monastery we found ourselves, among hundreds of tourists, watching intensely the gestures and voices for more than an hour and almost understood the deep exchange of theological dialectics.

Below, two video clips of the monks in action.

PETER'S LETTER (5)

Dear and patient readers,

Free Day in Lhasa and whilst Kin-mun and Kay are out shopping I am taking the opportunity for an extended period at the laptop. Everyone should travel with such friends! And by the way, we all are still good friends- ain’t that a miracle?

Mind you I think I could go off a few million Buddhists quite easily if I have to suffer the cramped and dingy interiors filled with thousands of devotees and gallons of rancid yak butter again. That was yesterday when we went to the Johkang temple. In reality the problem was “us’ rather than “them” as we were encroaching on their space and devotions. There is something to be said for a non-functioning place like the Potala Palace which we ‘did’ the day before. Tourists and guides are child’s play compared with the great unwashed. One pleasant aspect though was that we were able to get onto the roof which afforded good views of the old town and the Potala Palace. Lots of “new town” buildings too but as they are largely Han Chinese areas we pretend that they aren’t there, just as I suspect that they pretend that the Tibetans really aren’t there except to attract tourism and keep business flowing. A whole big can of worms that question and as I am not partial to worms and I certainly have no answers, I’ll leave it there.

We really enjoyed the visit to the Potala Palace which happened on day two of our stay. I don’t think anyone was up to the steep climb to the levels of rooms and shrines but with gradual ascent we all made it and then very much enjoyed seeing the contents. Mostly of a religious nature for though the place was administered through the religion, the bits we saw were things like burial stupas of all the previous 13 Dali Lamas, throne rooms and audience rooms. Certainly the highlight of the visit to date, and as we only have one more monastery to see tomorrow before catching the train to the lowlands on Saturday, I think it will remain so. Mind you, the monastery at Gandan is about 40km out of town so I trust that we see a bit of the countryside. Our guide tried to talk us into an expensive trip to a holy lake some hundreds of kilometres away but precarious wellness and sense made us decline.

Keir came down with a gum infection yesterday and did my trick of paying a visit to the local dental services. $5 for the visit, $1 for the pills. He’ll doubtless dine out on the experience but the upshot was that he has antibiotics which seem to be working. He has been sent out to do some shopping whilst I do this and seemed well enough for the task. I still have periods of listlessness and breathing problems but they seem to come right after a while. The others have caught colds but are not letting such things stop them getting out and about. I think I should be able to add a snap or two just to give you an idea of things. Hope it works because Hotmail is a bit lousy with the space available for attachments.

One interesting Buddhist thing we did yesterday was go to an out of town monastery to watch a daily debating forum they have in a courtyard. It is just the monks debating matters of faith amongst themselves and the detail is not available to the viewers unless you are a Tibetan trained in theology. It lacked one’s involvement as a consequence but it was an interesting bit of theatre. Lots off noise and hand slapping as they made their points to each other.

I am sure that this is more than enough to digest, and I haven’t even mentioned the food! It is all very agreeable- even the yak meat, my only objection is that the daily lunches run to about 10 courses and I am never that hungry. Today I get to choose a simple snack of my own once K gets back from the shopping trip.

Lots of love,

P

Jokhang Temple

While the Potala is the political base of the Dalai Lamas, the Jokhang Temple is the spiritual base of the Tibetan people.

Everyday thousands of pilgrims and devotees pray in their characteristic ritual of repeated prostrations.
Others paraded around the temple .......
......many spinning their prayer wheels.