By John Olesky (BJ 1969-96)
Paula and I are great heroes. Chairman Mao says so. Actually, what Mao said was, “Only if you have climbed the Great Wall will you become a real man.” Close enough.
After all, we didn’t take an easy access up to the Great Wall, which is 4,400 miles long. Our Chinese guide, Tiger, took us to the Juyong Pass. That meant we had to climb 396 rock steps, which vary from two inches to about two feet, with each step a different height than the one below and above it.
Steep steps. Really steep steps.
And no cable cars at Juyong, which help the wimps visiting Badaling and Mutianyu get up to the Great Wall.
Fortunately, a cinderblock wall and low iron railing aided climbers in Juyong. Paula and I, and maybe hundreds of other folks, used the railing to help us climb the steps. Even at that, we made several stops to get our breath as we moved higher. It took us an hour to make the climb and go back down, which also felt dicey.
But what a view of the Juyong valley below!
The Great Wall construction began in the fifth century BC and was extended by the third century BC. The Qin, Han and Jin dynasties all had a hand in it and weather and war took its toll on its destruction and disintegration in various areas of northern China.
Paula and I also walked on Tiananmen Square, where the famous 1989 video of a lone protester standing in front of government tanks was taken in China’s capital city of Beijing. Tiananmen Square is huge – more than a half-million square yards, the world’s largest urban open square -- adjacent to the Forbidden City, where only the emperor, his family, his concubines, his eunuchs and his political advisers once were allowed to enter. There are 800 buildings in the Forbidden City, now called the Imperial Palace.
The gate to the Forbidden City is called Tiananmen (Gate of Heavenly Peace), which gave the Square its name.
In foggy and rainy Shanghai, Paula and I walked the grounds of the Longhua Temple, built in 242 AD and reconstructed after various wars, the largest Buddhist temple in the city. Interestingly, to me, one of the Buddhas had a swastika on his beer belly. The air was pungent with incense sticks lit by worshippers, who kowtowed to Buddha.
I was amazed at the galloping modernization in China. Shanghai has more than 2,000 buildings that are at least 30 stories high. Old China is rapidly being replaced by modern China, at least in the cities. A Discovery Channel documentary said that China is building the equivalent of a Memphis every two months. Even the living standards are changing rapidly in the cities. The average annual income in Shanghai is $5,500, a long way from the $5 a week in old China, and increasing quickly.
The clothing on the people walking the streets looks the same as it does in America. Chinese teenagers wear pretty much what American teens wear. And hold hands in public.
In our travels to Asia, Europe, North America and the Caribbean I’ve seen that people are pretty much the same despite their differences in color, location and history.
Since Paula was in Shanghai in 1999, the city (think Las Vegas with much taller buildings and far more neon lighting) has gone from more bicycles than cars to three million more cars than bicycles. In a city of 20 million people, even with three lanes each way, that makes for serious traffic jams.
Stores with non-Chinese names abound. We saw several McDonald’s and Starbucks and other stores that are in Ohio.
And clean. There always seemed to be someone sweeping the snow, with crude handmade brooms, or mopping public floors. Litter is almost non-existent.
Paula and I took a subway, which felt like being in New York City, on a non-tour day and walked the Shanghai streets for more than three hours, going into a local grocery with a wide variety of plants and unrefrigerated meat on a counter, observing people on the streets and in the stores.
When we were ready to return to our hotel, we took a taxi to the nearest subway entrance, which was about three miles. The ride, including tip, cost 20 yuan (yoo-en, the Chinese dollar). That’s $2.60 in American dollars (multiple or divide by 8 to convert from one currency to the other).
We had lunch in the Hutong (old city) section of Beijing, which has two-room, one-story houses that are three centuries old, in the home of a Muslim family, the Fongs. Our lunches in China were served with plateful after plateful on a lazy Susan so that you could get the food you wanted easily. As fast as plates were emptied, different foods were added to the circling Susan. The Hutong outing included a pedicab ride to Mr. Fong’s house (rickshaws have been displaced by large tricycles with a cover for two passengers).
Chairman Mao decreed that everyone should exercise mind and body before coming to work. We visited a Beijing park where folks were ballroom dancing on the bare ground (it looked more like slow-motion jitterbugging to me, so Paula and I joined the locals, but at American speed; by now a million Chinese are doing it my way, which isn’t pretty).
Others were playing hacky sack, doing group singing, slow-motion routines with swords, making music with a guitar or piccolo, playing cards and what looked similar to checkers, but with different-shaped pieces. All this in the open air on a cold day (Beijing was 35 degrees colder than Shanghai, which is on the Huangpu River and nearer the ocean).
Paula and I took a night cruise of the Huangpu River, along Shanghai buildings that were spectacularly lighted. One building front was a 35-story TV screen with ever-changing advertisements.
We watched jade being sculpted (only diamond is harder, so diamond-tipped needles are used to shape the jade), tiny copper pieces being attached to containers to make cloisonné and silk rugs being made (it takes six to 12 months to get rugs that are 4 x 6 feet or larger, with 640 knots in each square inch; that takes small fingers and far greater eyesight than mine).
The Dec. 25-Jan. 3 trip was well worth it, even though it took 27 hours from the time we left our Shanghai hotel (a posh Holiday Inn, if you can believe it) for the flight to Beijing, followed by the 13-hour trip to New York City, then the flight to Pittsburgh and finally the drive to our Tallmadge condo.
It took about five days to re-adjust to Tallmadge time, since there’s a 13-hour difference between Ohio and China. We watched part of the Rose Bowl, live, at 7 a.m. the following morning.
For additional photos with more from China and less John click here. Note that these are in addition to those in the album found at the link at the top of the page
