Wild goose chase? Absolutely not......

The morning of July 24th started at 4.00am with us both wondering why we felt our beds moving. A scary feeling for people who have not been in an earthquake zone before. We later learned that there had been 2 or 3 aftershocks at a place a few kms south east of Juizhaiguo so we decided we had tempted fate long enough and perhaps it was time to hot foot it out of this area....but not before we had seen Huanglong!

Two friends are responsible for this part of our trip. Roma sent me a powerpoint presentation of the wonderful pools of Pamukkale in Turkey which sparked our interest and Yvonne to whom I forwarded it did not receive the captions so went looking for it on the internet and found a similar phenomenon in China. Of course we had to go to see it.....and boy was it worth it. The Huanglong Pools Park is a couple of hours by car from Juizhaiguo National Park and another World Heritage site with Eco awards and fantastic scenery. The minerals come from high up in the mountains and as they trickle and rush down the mountain they deposit calcium carbonate in the form of travertine forming little pools as they catch on the branches and logs. In turn when the light shines on this mineral laden water it becomes an explosion of colour from yellow and russet through the various greens to blues and turquoise. The calcium deposits are white white and so bright that it hurts your eyes to look at it in the sunshine. Again the Chinese have done a superb job of organizing the park and the 2 hour climb to see all the pools by threading walkways in and out of the forest coming as close as possible to the waters without damaging the environment. We spent an enjoyable afternoon there marveling yet again at nature and breathing the clean air before leaving over the mountains, passed the yaks (and billboards) back to Chengdu again by plane.



Chengdu was steamy hot but we wandered the local park watching the variety of Taiji (Tai Chi) groups and noting for the first time there were some people doing Taoist Tai Chi (the kind I do in Kelowna). Also here we noted a special attachment that people had positioned on their handlebars to hold their umbrellas and it looked such a good idea I might try it in Kelowna when I get back.


Off to Chongqing city a centrally administered municipality of 80,000 sq kms and a population the same size as Canada 32,000,000. Here we were impressed with the central pedestrian area which as ever was alive and vibrant with top end shops and affluence side by side with the street vendors carrying their wares in heavy wicker baskets on bamboo shoulder poles. After visiting the Three Gorges Museum which was beautifully laid out in a huge marble and glass building we headed with some difficulty to the Port and docks and found our cruise ship awaiting us.

Our River guide spoke very good English and our cabin with balcony was spacious and comfortable so we settled in for three days of rest and relaxation. Even better was to have all our meals prepared and beautifully presented and to find that our table companions were an interesting and enjoyable group from New Zealand/Australia, Germany/China and a newly retired American with his son from California.

This three Gorges Dam project I will leave you to investigate on the internet should you so desire as I am running out of time but suffice to say we were pleased to see the gorges before they were completely flooded which should be in 2009. the purpose of this project which took many years to get off the ground, 1919 - 1994 when it actually started has been shrouded in controversy (as most dams are) re environmental and humanitarian concerns. However given that almost half of the allocated funds went into compensation payments for new housing and the like there were not many naysayers that we met along the way. It is the largest dam in the world and on completion will have 5 locks to shepherd the Yangtze shipping traffic through and one ship lift. Its purposes are many but the major ones are to prevent flooding which has killed about 1 million people in the last 100 years and is a problem every year, to provide increased power generation and improve navigation plus a lot of other side benefits.


We docked at the Sandouping as we were unable to go through the locks due to recent flooding and the fact that it takes 3.5 hours to travel through all five of them. Onto Yichang where we caught the bus to Wuhan but arrived too late to make our next connection to Jingdezhen. However having got used to luxury and having arrived in steaming heat we determined that we liked the nice life and went to the nearest hotel - the only 5 star hotel I might add in the province - the best Western which with our requested discount cost us $80.00. We luxuriated in this splendour then went for a walk cut short by the night time heat and took refuge in the local MacDonalds. People of extremes we are but the ice cream was delicious and just like home.

Next morning we caught the early bus to Jingdezhen which is the home of the old imperial porcelain kilns - no longer operating I might add. The town known for its porcelain and even the street posts are wrapped in porcelain covers.

We realised now that we were in quite a different part of the country where no Pinyin or English could be seen. We had passed through Hubei Province with its rich agriculture where every square inch seemed to be lotus, rice, pumpkin and what looked like potatoes plus a few cows and water buffalo to Jiangxi where the soil looked less productive and trees abounded and where ploughs, breakbreaking hoes and the large straw hats were duly noted. We saw a variety of housing from what looked to be very, very poor shacks to three storied red roofed dwellings in small communities all along the landscape seen from the Expressway.

Having lost a day due to the poor connections in these out of the way places we abandoned our day long visit to 5 small rural and non-touristy villages in favour of catching the last bus to Hangzhou where we arrived safe and sound a day early. We plan to do the 5 villages when we can do them more leisurely from HZ over a long weekend perhaps.


We are now into laundry, showering and catching up with emails and accounts before repacking and leaving for Japan and Korea on Friday, where a new grandnephew awaits us.

Although in reality we feel we have seen very little of China we did discover much of its beauty and history with this trip and having seen 12 of the 23 provinces, one autonomous region and one centrally administered municipality, we feel we have given China a good innings and are now ready to look at other Asian countries, before re-entering the grind (for me at least) of teaching in September.

China is truly an amazing country which has had to build big to accommodate its 1.3 billion people hence it has some of the world's largest, biggest, highest edifices but still it manages to enable people to function in an organized and ordered way within such a huge country and population. We found traveling easy and efficient and relatively convenient and managed to do most of it with very little fuss, whether by train, plane, bus, taxi, camel or foot. Overall people were helpful and generous and we experienced none of the fear and anxiety that certainly I feel when traveling in Africa....or even parts of America. People are getting on with their lives and most everyone we spoke to feels that now is a period of growth and gradually increasing prosperity for China.

We hope that even without the photos you will have got some idea about our enjoyment of this trip and that many of you will decide to try it for yourself. It is certainly worth it.