Update
On 6/7 Cy and Dorothy left for a second mission trip to China.
Updates from their trip will be posted below in the order they were sent.
The most recent update was sent 7/16. It was sent in several parts, with
photos. I'm putting the text out now and I add the photos as I get a chance.
Thursday-Friday-Saturday (6/7 - 6/9)
Bob Maxwell took us to DIA early so he could be at a meeting at 9:30 AM. This, it turned out, was beneficial. When we got to Alaska Airlines we were told that our flight would be late leaving Denver and that we would miss our connection in Portland. This meant we would miss our connection in Japan. The whole trip was in jeopardy.
Then by favor a wonderful agent named Cinde went to work for us. She explored every possibility but could not find space because all flights were 20% overbooked. This "stuffing" apparently is the latest in airline strategies. The customers are just numbers to the airlines.
Cinde's Manager, Lex, saw assigned us a "must fly" classification and Northwest Airlines "created" some space on another flight and rewrote our tickets. Instead of going to Portland, we headed for Seattle; there we would hook up with another NWA flight to Japan that would arrive in time for us to get to our Beijing Flight.
But just getting to the airplane was a challenge. The security lanes were eight lines deep and the back of the line went out the main terminal almost to the exit doors. It took one hour to get through security and we thought for certain, we would not make our flight.
But again, the Alaska Airline people were at the Gate waiting for us. They had pre-arranged for our Boarding Passes. When we got to the crowded gate, we were called to come to the head of the line and we were escorted onto the plane to leave for Seattle.
It was a good flight on a European Airbus. Ten hours and one day later {we crossed the International Date Line in Mid-pacific} we landed at Narita Airport in Tokyo Japan.
We boarded NWA Flight 11 to Beijing and sat on the plane for about two hours, then, we were told that the flight would have to be cancelled due to mechanical problems. So we grabbed our carry-on luggage and departed the plane.
NWA provided us with rooms at the Narita-Radisson Hotel with complimentary dinner and breakfast. This was the best part of a bad deal.
After going through Immigration we got to the hotel at 11:30 PM. We ate dinner and then I made some emergency e-mails to our friend who had rented a car to meet us at the airport and to our China Travel Agents. We had to ask them to contact the hotel and tell them we would be one day late. We had guaranteed the first night so we though we would have to send that bill to NWA. The Agents contacted the Golden Palace Hotel who agreed to hold our rooms for us.
Finally, we made it to bed at 1:30 in the morning.
NWA rebooked us on Japan Airlines Flight 781 leaving at 10:55 AM from Tokyo to arrive in Beijing after about three hours.
When we arrived in Beijing, we spent about an hour looking everywhere but we could not find our luggage. Then those special people who track these things found them for us. They were in the infamous "Back Room", sort of luggage limbo.
Dorothy's first rule of travel is "Never take the first offer". We avoided all of the “gypsy” cab drivers offering us a ride. We made it to the taxi queue where we procured a "metered" taxi with a really good driver.
The trip into Beijing was quite beautiful. The access highways into the city are wide and in great condition. The traffic was heavy but it moved smoothly without an incident. The air was heavy with pollution and visibility was limited. Still, we could tell that Beijing is a very beautiful, world class city.
In about one hour we were checking into the Golden Palace Silver Street Hotel. This is a funky Hotel...indeed!
We called our friend to tell her we had made it and then I fell on the bed at about 6:30 PM and slept until the next morning. Dorothy was exhausted as well but she was able to stay awake for a few hours more.
Sunday (6/10)
Huaning and her friend Yah came by the Hotel at 9:00 AM. These are two very special ladies. We had a pleasant breakfast together and then they took us to the Temple of Heaven complex. What an amazing site!
According to the information provided at the site, the ancients believed in a "Most High God" that they called the "God of Heaven" . How the words of Daniel, the Prophet, rang in my ears; "In the days of those Kings the God of Heaven shall set up a kingdom".
Yah is a lawyer and possesses a good intellect. She has been accepted for graduate studies at Northwestern University in Chicago this fall. She interpreted the Chinese writing for me and it was a revelation to her because of the precise wording in Chinese. The "God of Heaven", the most High God, was very real to the ancients.
After this we went to Huaning's home. It is a very nice apartment with a kitchen, a living room and an office next to a bedroom and bath. It is well decorated and comfortable. We had some chilled watermelon and enjoyed getting to know each other a little better. I was so taken in by the charm and depth of these two special characters.
They represented China in the best of form and hospitality.
After this, Huaning took us to a Sichuan lunch at a very "in" location, an old factory that has been developed into a trendy Café- Art Gallery neighborhood. The food was spicy and plentiful. It was a delightful time as we got to know each other.
Then off we went to a very trendy and air conditioned "Tea Shop" for some cool drinks and great conversation. The cooler air was appreciated since it was in the high 90s and very humid; and we had been out in the sun all day at the Temple of Heaven.
Huaning turned in her rental car and then we scrambled on foot for the Peking Opera, a local show involving some ancient art forms and stories about historical figures including the "Monkey King" and the "Goddess of Heaven".
What a long day; it was very interesting indeed. We took a taxi back to the Hotel and collapsed into bed.
The Chinese are a wonderful people with a vibrant creative nature. They are taking on the many challenges resulting from their rapidly expanding population and the exploding economy that has resulted from the Open Door Policy in 1986 and the development of more of a free market system. It cannot be an easy task to manage 1.3 billion lives but the system itself seems to be working quite efficiently. Transportation is excellent and the increasing automobile traffic seems to flow easily and quickly.
Like other developing nations China is dealing with basic personal freedoms and human rights issues as well and there is some progress at the personal level.
Monday (6/11)
Dorothy and I stopped by a large and very old Catholic Church located on the corner of Wang Fu Jing Dajie and the by-street where our hotel is situated. The people were very warm even if they were more than a little surprised to see us.
Dorothy and I were up and out to the door headed for breakfast at McDonald's on Wang Fu Jing Dajie. This is Beijing's version of the modern pedestrian mall. It is a beautiful wide walkway lined with trees and, if it was not under considerable remodeling, it would be a great walking experience.
Still everywhere you go you can sense and see the preparations that are being made for the 2008 Olympic Games. Beijing wants to put on its best face; it is quite an attractive face…indeed. There is no question that, by any standards, Beijing is a world class city and if it can clean up the air pollution, it will be as beautiful as any other capital city in the world.
After breakfast we walked down Dong Chang'an Jie towards the Forbidden City. In front of the Beijing Hotel we picked up a new local friend. "Lili" is a smart "starving artist" who was looking to attach herself to the next largest economy which happened to be us, at the time. She spoke English and, just for fun, she took us on a tour of the Hotel Beijing and the Grand Hotel. If there were "Ten Star" Hotels, these would easily qualify. They are gorgeous and, I imagine, quite expensive.
Lili took us to some galleries that featured her work. She is quite talented. We saw some very beautiful artwork by other well known Chinese artists.
Then Lili took us to the Beijing Art Gallery of Imperial City where we saw the exhibits and then met her teacher. He is a highly regarded artist who is going to Boston to help open a gallery for Harvard University in the fall. He painted a special painting for Dorothy, one that involved spelling her name in a bamboo art design. He gave it to her for free. We purchased one of Lili's works, a very nice piece involving a panda in Bamboo.
Then we returned to the Hotel trying to stay in the shade as much as possible. It is very hot with temperatures running close to 100% after mid-day.
It was a great morning.
We ventured out for dinner after the sunset and the temperatures dropped a bit. On a earlier sortie for bottled water, Dorothy had found a small inexpensive restaurant around the corner. We had a nice Chinese dinner.
Walking back through the Church Plaza we met a professional man who seemed very intelligent and wanted to talk with us. So we spent an interesting time with him and have planned to have dinner with him tomorrow night.
We returned to the hotel and asked for housekeeping to come and fix a broken door on our closet. One of the women from the hotel came by to see the damage. She speaks some English and she spent some time talking with us and volunteered to show us around Beijing in her own car. The Chinese people are truly a lovely people.
What remarkable Beijing grace had been given to us!
The second update from Cy and Dorothy starts here (no dates were provided).
Our time is Beijing cost us about 7,000 RMB for eight nights stay at the Golden Palace Silver Street Hotel. The Hotel is in need of some serious renovations but our room was comfortable and clean and relatively inexpensive for the area. It had air conditioning, a major plus with temperatures at about 37 C or above.
The Hotel staff was professional and very pleasant to work with on a daily basis.
The Golden Palace hotel is extremely well located in an area of 5-star Hotels such as the Peninsula-Beijing, the Novotel and the Dynasty.
It was conveniently situated so we could walk to Wang Fu Jing Dajie, T’ian a Men Square, the Forbidden City and the Beijing Railway Station. It was a short taxi ride to the Confucius Temple and the Llama Tibetan Temple on the Northeast side of Beijing.
A trip to the Temple of Heaven, the Summer Palace or the Great Wall at Badaling with a side trip to the Ming Tombs is better taken on a bus tour booked through the hotel with door to door service. These sites are all worth the fare but, with always heavy traffic, they take hours to get to and then several hours to tour and enjoy. It makes for a full day in the extreme heat and Dorothy suffered a little heat prostration and had to rest in the shade for a while.
We paid a visit to the Zoo just to see the Panda who was having a tough time with the heat, so Panda was soaking in some cool water. Huaning told us that all the Panda does is to eat and sleep. I feel there is a little Panda in all of us.
After a wonderful stay in Beijing with our friend Huaning and her friend Yah we were able to get an incredible fare on Air China from Beijing to Kunming and we took the deal.
We arrived in Kunming on Sunday evening about 9:00 PM. The Camellia Hotel Staff recognized us from our earlier trip and fixed us up with a room for the night. I requested room 404, where we had enjoyed our earlier visit, but it was not available until the next day. So we made do. The next day we were back in room 404 and it was like we had never left. The Camellia is our home.
We took Monday off to get our laundry done and to go to the Bank of China to get some RMB. We stood in line for quite a while and Dorothy began talking with the gentleman behind us. He was also from Canada. He has a project to the northwest of here along the China-Burma border and invited us to come visit him there. Dorothy and I are very excited about the possibilities there. We had dinner with him that evening and we will plan a trip there after we meet with our friends here in Kunming.
It was our first day back in Kunming and the Camellia Hotel staff got us back into our old and favorite room # 404. As we sat there sipping tea, we sensed that it was as if we had never left China. We were back on the King's Highway.
We needed some RMB {Yuan} so off we went to the Bank of China to trade in some US dollars. We were ushered by the bank staff to a special "VIP" window and waited there while the woman ahead of us worked through a number of account problems.
We were getting impatient when a man walked up behind us and commented about the time involved. We were delighted to hear the English language. Dorothy began to speak with him and found out that he was a Canadian from Edmonton, Alberta.
The conversation got more interesting after we finished our banking and went out into the street. He had been in China for 18 years and had also spent many years before that in Thailand. We decided to have dinner with him later if he was available. He was available, so we had a bite to eat at Oma’s Meili Pub on East Dong Feng Lu.
During dinner he told us about his "development" work in a place called Fugong, in the Nu Jiang Valley. Jiang is Chinese for River so this is the Nu River Valley located near the Burmese {Myanmar} Border.
Fugong is a small city with about 90,000 people. The population of the Valley is mostly "Lisu" Tribal people who dwell high up in the mountains. These mountains are indeed very impressive but they are only the foothills to the Himalaya.
The "Lisu" are a minority people in China with ethnic roots in Burma and Tibet. The Canadian man invited us to come visit him and his family in Fugong; we believed that this was something that we had to do. We spent our first week in Kunming traveling with some local friends and doing whatever was available; as it turned out that it was quite a bit after all.
Off we went on about a four hour bus ride to Da Li, a ancient city on the shores of a beautiful lake. Instantly, it became my favorite city on this trip. It is beautiful.
The travel people in Kunming booked us into a youth hostel in the old City of Da Li. The Old Da Li Inn’s courtyard is seen to the right. When we saw the room Dorothy fell into a depression, the room was really terrible, but, because we had paid for two nights we thought we were stuck.
But Dorothy's Dad had a better idea. After all, He is my Father in Law and He wants me to take care of His daughter. So, we left the Old Da Li Inn and took a walk around the old city.
We walked about 100 feet down the street and there was an impressive complex, new, clean and quite beautiful. We looked into the yard and the gardens with appreciation.
Then a man in uniform said hello to Dorothy and she asked, "What is this place?" He said, "It is a hotel would you like to see it?" Dorothy went through the front gate like a bottle rocket and I followed her into the expensive looking lobby.
The man asked Dorothy if she would like to see a room and Dorothy was off like a bottle rocket again. I followed her to the “model” room. It was a beautifully appointed room and equipped with every convenience. This is a five star hotel managed by the same people who manage the Green Lake Hotel in Kunming.
We asked what the room rates were and they told us that rooms started at 880 Yuan, about $120.00 per night. This would be a strain on our budget. Dorothy said, with a long face, it would be too expensive and I agreed. Then the young man said perhaps that the Manager might give us a discount. Now "discount" is Dorothy's favorite word so when she asked, "How much of a discount", I felt heavenly chemistry at work. The Manager said that because a conference was coming in the next day the room was available for only one night. He offered us the room for 380 Yuan, a whopping 60% discount.
The rate was less than $50.00 US. I have paid more to stay in a Ramada in Alabama. Heaven does not have to speak to me twice. I booked the room and watched Dorothy's face light up. We went to our room and rejoiced over one more operational miracle. Her dad was pleased.
After our one night stand, we were ushered out of the Da Li Gorung Hotel with the highest honors. What wonderful and beautiful people they are.
We recommend this hotel highly and so encourage anyone visiting Old Da Li to treat yourself to at least one night in this lovely place.
We had to return to Old Da Li Inn for one night. I called it the "The Bates Motel" for one night. But Dorothy pointed out that the "Bates Motel" {The Movie Psycho} was actually better because, at least, the shower worked!
These pictures show our transport plan for the "up-Country" experience.
We had traveled on a new "Express" bus from Kunming to Da Li. Now bus travel is not my first choice but this was comfortable, inexpensive and fast. But the experience went down hill quickly.
After our experience in Old Da Li we took a taxi to the bus station in "New" Da Li and boarded a smaller and less comfortable bus for Liuku.
The older bus ground its way along the famous but remodeled Burma Road that winds up through the mountains. I could not believe that I was actually riding on the very roadbed that had been protected by the Flying Tigers in their defense of China in the War with Japan.
We arrived in Liuku about five hours later and there we booked another smaller and less comfortable bus that took us about fours hours "up-country" along the Nu River Valley to Fugong.
About two hours out of Liuku, we turned off the main highway and onto some of the most dangerous roads I have ever seen. The roads are barely wide enough for two vehicles and there are no guard rails or shoulders to protect you from a deadly fall down into the Nu River hundreds of feet below. In some places the roadway was falling into the river.
There were times when we looked out our window and peered directly down into the river, vicariously suspended somehow above the valley. This trip made the first bus ride look tame. It was scary indeed!
Fortunately the driver kept the wheels on the road bed if only by few inches.
It was white knuckle most of the way. But, the scenery was indeed spectacular.
We can say that in all our travels, Dorothy and I have never witnessed scenery so unusually beautiful.
Dorothy described the scenery as "unrelenting" beauty and I agreed.
There were a thousand "Kodak Moments" along the way. I had to empty my XD Card onto my laptop computer and recharge my camera battery every night.
Yet, it would get even better.
We got the opportunity to see some of the Lisu culture. There are more than 500 Christian Churches in the Nu Jiang Valley around the city of Fugong. We were able to attend Sunday services at one of them. We were recognized as guests and warmly welcomed. We were asked to sing a song for them, so we sang "All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name".
The Lisu are an ancient people who received the message from some of the original people who ventured here from Europe and America over 100 years ago. There are awesome stories about these "foreigners". The Lisu have carried the message into Burma {Myanmar} which is about a two day walk to the West through the high Mountains.
A number of Lisu women had come into Fugong to learn about a program that trains them to care for Lisu orphans. Some of these women walked for two hours through the mountains to come to the meeting. The women asked if they could have a picture taken with us and we agreed.
We do not speak Chinese or Lisu so we had to be put in place for the photo-op.
Their manner of dress is quite beautiful and we were thoroughly charmed by them. Dorothy and I were both deeply concerned about the plight of these women. Many of them are poor widows supporting their own families and even bringing other Lisu orphans into their own households to care for them also.
How utterly incredible!