CHINA

Xi’an was once the Imperial capital of China during the Ming dynasty, and I started my day with a walk on the walls of the old city. Unlike Jerusalem’s old city walls which are built of huge rocks, this wall which is 20 meters wide at the top and about 40 wide at the base is built of small bricks! The walls run 14 km around the old city – though the old city itself no longer exists. It’s about 300 steps up from street level, and there are a number of quaint pagoda-style buildings along the wall, that were once lookouts and guard towers, but now serve mainly as tourist stores, coffee shops and the like. From the top of the wall, there’s a great rooftop view of the city, both the old and the new. Here you can rent bikes or golf-carts to ride around the walls, but I chose to scout out information on foot and just soak it all in. 

Usually, when I’m in a new place, rather than do something touristy, I love to simply sit a look. There are old cannons on the walls, but a close scrutiny reveals they are made of plastic. Aha! The garbage cans are beautifully decorated with sculpted dragons – fake but very pretty. And everything is CLEAN! It’s astounding. Even downtown, the boulevards are long, wide, busy, flower-lined… and clean! Here on the walls, someone walks around picking up even the smallest cigarette butts. No unemployment in China.

Once I figured that I had an initial “feel” for the place, I skipped down the stairs and went to the Muslim Quarter to see the market and the Great Mosque. The Muslims here are indigenous Chinese, so there’s none of the Jihad stuff here. You want to be a Muslim? Knock yourself out! Islam is a religion that is officially recognized in China. But be tolerant of all people. The guy at the gate asked where I was from, and upon hearing Israel, responded with a smile and a “Shalom!” Ah, the things you learn for the tourists… The fascinating thing about the mosque is that it’s built, like all places of worship, in a traditional Chinese garden, with all the required appurtenances, like gates, steles, and of course, Chinese architecture. Like other temples and official buildings here in China, the mosque lies east-west (facing Mecca) in a garden built on a north-south axis. It’s also very similar to the former, ancient synagogue in Kaifeng. Just outside the Muslim Quarter I passed a Starbucks store. Starbucks too has made it to China, and I was able to buy a Xi’an City Mug to add to my collection! Yes!

In the afternoon I went to the Great Wild Goose Pagoda which serves as a Buddhist temple in a magnificent and beautifully landscaped garden. Its interesting see how China is “antiquifying” itself, rebuilding ancient sites in the same material and style that they existed for many years before the Cultural Revolution removed them. So now, it’s easy to find renewed antiquities here in China. Hmmm…..

I departed my hotel the next morning to see the Terra Cotta Army. My bag had to be outside my room by 8:15 a.m., from where it’s picked up by the hotel staff, and taken to the airport. Quite frankly I was somewhat nervous seeing as I never like to let things out of my sight, but - ah, well - when in Rome and all that… I must tell you the service in the hotels here is superb, and everyone is very smilingly willing to be of assistance. Of course, there’s no shortage of staff, and I find that the somewhat martial style staff briefings that take place every morning are a little amusing.

My first stop was at a factory that makes all sorts of things like terra cotta miniatures - and not so miniatures. If you want a life size warrior you can get that too, and also in brass. The place also manufactures screens with beautiful engravings, as well as furniture with mother of pearl inlays, carpets, trinkets, clothes, etc. The furniture is made by hand, on site. It was fascinating to watch the artisans doing all the lacquer work by hand, and then polishing it by hand using sand and water. Well, officially, there’s no unemployment in China, so there’s tons of hands to do all sorts of manual work. It’s one of the ways that big government here takes care of everyone in one manner or another.

I then went off to see the Terra Cotta Army. I must say it’s fascinating, to see how this whole necropolis concept evolved. Initially, dead Emperors were buried along with their (living) armies, who were to protect them in the afterlife.   

Well, once they realized that burying 10,000 live people was a real drag on productivity, because you needed to train a whole new army, they decided to bury the emperor with a terra cotta army. This was the first terra cotta army to be buried, some 2,000 years ago, along with Emperor Qin Xi Huang Di of the Qin Dynasty, who united China into the country it is today. The preservation is astounding. Rows upon rows of man size soldiers, each one an individual and different from the one next to him. And oh! – the thousands and thousands of tourists… it was so crowded there. In fact everywhere I’ve been and all over wherever you go there seems to be thousands people all over the place. 

Oh, but there are thousands of people all over the place. 

As the kids say, “Duh, it’s China!?”

The drive from Kunming to the Stone Forest is along the Burma Road (ours here in Israel is not the original, but is named after the one in China), which makes it feel sort of like “near home.” I can only describe the Stone Forest as astounding, fascinating, awesome, amazing, and stupendous even – and still not do it justice. It’s made of tens of thousands of massive spiked Karst rock formations which were once part of a prehistoric now-dried sea bed. They tower up to 40 meters high and more, near vertical climbs up, even steeper climbs down, narrow crevasses to negotiate, with nooks and crannies everywhere. I climbed to the peak of the peak - and the view of the whole site is simply indescribable. 

On the way around I stopped alongside a rice paddy and for the first time in my life I saw rice growing! Cool! Rice is harvested twice annually, but its growth is not seasonal. Farmers can grow it anytime during the year, so that it’s not unusual to see harvested rice paddies alongside those with rice that has not yet ripened - a phenomenon that creates stunning patchwork scenery. And nothing goes to waste, for once the rice has been harvested, the stalks are left to dry and are then used to make rice paper.

In the afternoon I strolled through Cuihu Park, a public garden here in Kunming. The lake here is for the most part covered in lotus flowers, something else that I had never seen before. It was about 5 p.m. and all of ‘Amcha’ China was out in the park. Some on paddle boats on the lake, some kids in large inflatable transparent plastic balls that they crawl around in on the water. In a variety of locations impromptu orchestras set up and start playing music and folks come along and sing and others just sit around to watch and listen. This was authentic China at its finest, the exciting stuff that anthropology is made of.

Kunming is well known for Yuantong Si, a very large Buddhist Temple. The ornate beauty of this 1,000 year old temple is quite overwhelming. The various steles and gates, the carved dragons and turtles and lions (the Chinese never knew how lions looked seeing as there were never any here in China, so their lions are fearsome looking creatures, but they don’t look at all like lions), the smaller shrines along the path to the temple, the place for lighting candles and incense, the water around the temple, and then the temple itself (that’s more or less the progression of experiences along the path) all create an overwhelming experience of beauty. I also lucked out that there was a procession of monks in their yellow robes chanting their mantras and doing “hakafot” around the temple site. I find the music of the mantras themselves very moving. I don’t know what they are saying or what it means, but it definitely touches a deep place in me.   

The folks light candles, and light incense. Then they sort of wave the incense sticks, held between both hands in various directions, somewhat like out “hoshanot”. They bow before the statue of a small Buddha in the little shrines, while in the temple there is a BIG Buddha. There’s also one of a multi-armed female Buddha. It’s interesting that of all the Buddha’s there is only one that smiles, the Happy Buddha – I’ll mention him in the next chapter.

After the temple I went to a tea factory - Dr. Tea - where I saw all types of tea in a variety of shapes and sizes, learned all about tea and aging of tea, sampled a number of teas, lotus flower tea, lemon tea, some other yucky tea that smelled of stinky rice (which is what it’s called in Chinese: Stinky Rice Tea) and lychee tea. 

That was the only one that I liked, so I bought a box to bring home. 

From there I headed to a small market in the city center, where tourists usually don’t go. It’s the market where the locals shop. Lots of tea shops, mushroom shops (Kunming is famous for its more than 400 types of edible mushrooms), fruit, nuts, clothes and trinkets. 

I bought two types of lychees – one looks the same as the lychees we get here in Israel, and the other is a big red ball with hairy brown tentacles. Looks strange, but what incredible flavor! Shehecheyanu!

Wanting to spend more time in nature, I drove from Guilin to Yangzhou. Guilin itself is something of a resort town, a small city of only about 600,000 people compared with the previous two cities I was in, that have populations of around 6 million each. My hotel in Guilin is situated on the banks of Rongzhuo Lake, by the Peach Blossom River. The names alone exude rest and relaxation. The Li River also runs through the city, the third largest river in China after the Yellow River and the Yangtze. 

For the movie buffs among you, the area of Guilin and Yangzhou is where the movie “The Painted Veil” was made. Also, part of “The Joy Luck Club” was filmed here. 

My aim in taking the hour’s drive to and from Yangzhou was to take a cruise down the Li River past the spectacular Karst scenery for which this area is renowned. As I drove I passed many rice paddies (agriculture still maintains over 70% of the population of China – an astounding figure taking into account that that translates into about 1 billion people!); the whole rice paddy thing really is beautiful. There’s a sense of authenticity to this scenery. You feel it, it gets to you. Spectacular! 

Yangshou (population 300,000) is a picturesque place nestled at the bottom of some spectacular Karst geography (I think I’m using spectacular a lot, but what can I say, it really is the most appropriate word to use to describe what I’ve been seeing here) – it’s a very touristy town, many people come here just to relax, do some rock-climbing and just hang out. Anyway, I took a cruise down the river to enjoy the scenery from ground (water?) level, watched how the locals fish with cormorant birds tied to strings (here too, there is a large population of minorities and there is a big influence of the Thai ethnicities in this area). The riverside is covered in what they call Phoenix-tail bamboo, because that’s what it looks like. All in all, a relaxing, tranquil few hours.

Sufficiently relaxed and mellow, I returned to Guilin and went to climb Yaoshan Mountain which towers over Guilin (altitude 150m) to a height of 950m above sea level (about the height of my home town, Efrat). Getting to the top requires a ski-lift ride of about 20 minutes over spectacular, wondrous, unbelievable scenery, which turns even better looking down from the top. What I saw at ground level from the boat I now saw from near-heaven – and it was indeed heavenly! During the descent I got off the ski lift at the halfway station, and made the rest of the trip down on a toboggan – not a snow toboggan but one that’s on a polished aluminum slide. Eizeh kef! Zooming down the mountain at breakneck speed - it was fantastic! Oh, to have had my grandson on my lap…

On Shabbat afternoon I walked around the city. A little girl came up to me selling roses. Seeing it was Shabbat I couldn’t buy even if I wanted to. She was very, very cute – and a born salesperson. I was walking along trying to get by, and she came up to me and patted my stomach and said “Happy Buddha, Happy Buddha” and I had such a good laugh! Of course, there’s meaning behind that. There are relatively few overweight people in China. Also, of all the Buddha statues that you see here, only one of them smiles, or is happy, and that’s the fat one. Thus here in China, portly people are considered jolly folk, and are nicknamed “Happy Buddha”. 

It’s a nickname that has come back to me in many places in the East! 

  The Bund is the famous promenade of Shanghai (the word itself is an Anglo-Indian expression, and is only used in context of the boardwalk in Shanghai, even though I have a vague recollection of hearing it used also in Mumbai) that runs along the western bank of the Huangpu River, a tributary of the Yangtze that runs through Shanghai, between the suburbs of Pudong and Puxi. 

I love sailing, so I signed up for a cruise on the river. Then a completely astounding thing happened. In a matter of minutes the sky darkened over with almost black clouds, the wind picked up something fierce, a typhoon warning was announced and the river police stopped all traffic on the river. The whole thing took less than 20 minutes! Amazing! Ah well, thems the breaks. But it turns out that one man’s adversity is indeed another man’s fortune. The local scalps did a roaring trade selling knock-off Rolex, Omega and Breitling watches. Aha! The bargaining begins. I love it! Started at 1 for $5, down to 4 for $10 and eventually settling on 6 for $12. Who can resist? 

I must tell you, the Shanghai skyline is spectacular! First of all the buildings are HIGH! Shanghai plans on being the largest city in the world by the year 2020, with the tallest buildings in the world. Right now they are completing the   

currently tallest building, and have already begun construction of the one that will be loftier still. They work at incredible speed, what with their being no problem of manpower in this country. It’s all very fascinating, this issue of endless amount of working hands available here in China. It’s sometimes hard to grasp that there are so many people here in this country. Who can even figure out 1.3 or 1.5 billion? Just the zeroes make me light-headed!

Cruiseless, but with a pocketful of timepieces, I crossed the river and went to see a show about the history of China in song and dance and very colorful costumes. Shows in this country bring entertainment to a whole new level and the give the word ‘spectacle’ a whole new meaning. Colorful costumes and easy interpretation, along with electronic-board simultaneous translations, make the shows a sheer delight. After the show I took the elevator up the Pearl Tower, something like the CN Tower in Toronto, for a night view of the City. The grand buildings along the Bund are all lit up every night until 10:30 p.m. when ‘poof!’ - all goes dark. It’s as if the city disappears. Very odd… 

My next morning started with a visit to Yu Yuan - Shanghai’s “Chinatown.” Seems strange, doesn’t it, to have a Chinatown in the biggest city in China. It has a lot to do with the history of Shanghai as an international city, and the influence – and concessions - of the British, French, Americans and Japanese (and also, with a lot of Jewish money and investment). This is the only area in China where I came across homeless or street people. They were all disabled in one way or another, in terrible shape, and were panhandling. A harsh indictment, I think, about the way less-than-productive citizens are treated here.

After that I made my way to the city planning museum, to see how they’re going to enlarge and improve the city by 2020. As a museums systems designer in one of my former careers, I was intrigued by the concept of a museum devoted to city planning. The one exhibit that overwhelmed me was a vast scale model – it occupies a complete floor of the museum - of the entire city of Shanghai as it will look in 2020. The detail is incredible, almost down to the tree-in-the-street level. Spectacular!

My last stop in Shanghai was the old Jewish quarter. The buildings of Shanghai’s once renowned Jewish ghetto now house other residents. The Ohel Moshe synagogue was under renovation and thus closed to visitors. But the ghetto nevertheless tells the marvelous story of the rescue during the Holocaust of over 5,000 Jews from Lithuania, thanks to the heroic efforts of the Japanese Consul, Chiune Sugihara, recognized by Yad Vashem as one of the Righteous Among the Nations. When I served as Yad Vashem’s spokesman, I once had the good fortune to meet the late Mr. Sugihara’s wife and daughter. This was the place of rescue of many survivors, including Zerach Warhaftig, a former Israeli cabinet minister and one of the signatories on Israel’s Declaration of Independence, and also the entire Mir Yeshiva. 

For me - as a child of Holocaust survivors - this was one of the most important sites in China that I had to visit.

And so I finished my visit to Shanghai - on a “high.” 

Beijing (meaning ‘northern capital’), imperial capital of China, was founded by Kublai Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan, Mongol conqueror and Emperor of China. Originally it was called Khanbaliq, or Dadu, later becoming Peking, and now Beijing. I wonder if it was the inspiration for Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “Xanadu”.

My morning started with a drive out of the city. My initial impression is one of splendid architectural beauty. While I would term Shanghai spectacular, I think Beijing is best described as beautiful. Very wide avenues, tree-lined, extremely clean (which is the case in every Chinese city I’ve visited). There is construction everywhere what with the Olympics coming along so soon. The Olympic Village is well on the way to being completed. The architecture, both here and in Shanghai, is all Chinese, and its creativity is mind-boggling. In Shanghai I spent time mainly in the downtown area among the high-rises there; while in Beijing I’m seeing lots of public housing, and here you can see that great emphasis has been placed on creating aesthetic living surroundings.

The most astounding construction engineering I have ever seen anywhere in the world is in Beijing: two soaring leaning buildings, being constructed not upright, but at a curved slant, approximately 60 floors high each. They will eventually join together and atop them will be constructed further stories. But, I digress…

I made my way out of the city to a Cloisonné factory. The word Cloisonné comes from the word cloister, the place where the nuns live, and describes the artistic process by which those wonderful Chinese enameled vases, plates, etc., are created. I watched the process of creation of this artwork from start to finish – it’s all done by hand and fired numerous times to create the final smooth, elaborate result. But the most amazing thing about this intricate artistry is that the most important part, the copper wiring that creates the intricate, elaborate and artistically convoluted design, which is afterward filled in by hand painting, is also hand-worked and attached to the vases / plates etc. with glue. Amazing! 

From my obligatory contribution to the Chinese economy I continued to the Great Wall. My initial impression of this failed attempt to keep the enemy out of China, which has remained the primary man-made wonder of the world, was that it’s a rather little wall. It’s not overly high or very thick – it was built so that 10 soldiers could walk on it abreast - but its winding, twisting, dipping, climbing 6,000 km length is entirely astounding. It’s quite obvious that the myth that it’s visible from space is just that, a myth, and I don’t know why any emperor thought it would keep anyone out. Nevertheless, climbing along the wall to a hilltop and sitting there up in the mountains and seeing the wall winding its way up and down, over hill and dale, all the way to the horizon and beyond is indeed an awesome, and an exceedingly impressive sight. So while the wall is not Great, is sure is great!

What’s interesting is this Chinese issue with evil coming from the north. Not an unfamiliar concept to Jews (Isaiah also spoke of evil coming from the north). The closing off of entry from the north is a phenomenon that you come across here in China at all temples and palaces and sacred locations. They’re all closed at the north and open at the south. I guess for the Chinese, the fear that the Mongols would invade was a very real one. In fact, when the Mongols did decide to do so, they did indeed come from the north, and the wall didn’t stop them.

From the wall where I davened Mincha (I should have a T-Shirt made “I davened Mincha at the other wall", could make a bundle!) I headed back toward Beijing and stopped to visit the Sacred Way of the Tombs of the Ming Emperors. It’s a huge closed-to-the-north open-to-the-south garden with beautiful gates (and that’s a whole other discussion too) and powerful sculptures of real and mythical creatures. 

I’m sure that the makers of the Harry Potter movies must have visited this place, for there in the pantheon of sculpted mythical creatures sat a statue of a hippogriff!

Today I started with a visit to Tiananmen Square and the (no longer) Forbidden City. I must say the square is an imposing, impressive place, what with all the official buildings surrounding it. Not quite as majestic as the Mall in Washington DC, but on the other hand, it’s HUGE! Everyone asks where was the picture taken of the student standing in front of the tank during the student uprising? Turns out it was a pretty lucky photo. Correspondents were holed up in the Beijing Hotel and from their angle the square was almost not in view. Here in China, many people don’t know about the student uprising because it never made the local news. The square is lined with assorted public buildings, the parliament, party headquarters, and museums. Also in the square is the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong.

From there I footed off into the Forbidden City, residence of Chinese Emperors for hundreds of years. What’s especially interesting here (and other places too) is the use of colors to designate certain things. For example, the roofs of royal buildings are all in Yellow tile, because Yellow is the color of the Emperor. Some buildings have blue tiles, signifying heaven, and others green tiles, representing Earth. Yin and Yang. Heaven and Earth. As near all Chinese temples and palaces, etc, a Bell Tower and a Drum Tower. Yin and Yang, Heaven and Earth. Open to the South, closed to the North. But the lavishness of it all is astounding! It’s somewhat reminiscent in opulence (but in different style, of course) to the palace in Versailles. No wonder that decadence eventually set in and the whole system was overthrown.

Palaces and reception halls, official residences and homes for the palace staff, bureaucrats, and the entire entourage, including the emperor’s many concubines. Much of the Forbidden City is built from marble, which is in plentiful supply here. Ornate sculpted marble steles, both upright and slanted, and including an elaborately chiseled marble slab measuring almost 50 square meters and weighing 200 tons! My rather swift walk through the Forbidden City took me 3½ hours, so that gives you an idea about how large this place is. Much of the epic movie “The Last Emperor” describing the lamentable life of Pu Yi, the last of China’s emperors, was shot within the Forbidden City. That and the forthcoming Olympic Games have caused the Forbidden City to undergo a major facelift of late, making a visit to this unusually enthralling location all the more worthwhile. 

Roofs have a special significance in China, and many of these old buildings existed in order to support the roof. The amazing part of it is that they are built without any nails or screws at all. The frames, upon which the roof tiles are set, all fit into one another with brackets and wedges. 

From the Forbidden City I went to the Summer Palace, the place to which the Emperors and their entourages would retire in the summer months. Now this place is seriously spectacular. Beautiful gardens, a massive lake, gorgeous arched stone bridges (which earned the envy of Marco Polo when he visited here, because in Europe they didn’t yet have the know-how with which to build stone span bridges) – the Summer Palace became the place where the last Empress Dowager of China spent most of her time (rather than in the Forbidden City). Now, this lady was infatuated with pomp and splendor, and so loved marble, she had her artisans make her a boat from it. It didn’t float. 

My final stop on this imperial day was at the Temple of Heaven, probably the most beautiful of all the Temples/Palaces I saw throughout all of China. It was used by the Emperor only twice a year when he went – alone – to pray for successful harvests, something along the lines of one of the prayers of the Cohen Gadol in our tradition, which is described in the liturgy for Yom Kippur. There are many similarities all over the place; we are after all two civilizations which grew at more or less the same time, even though on opposite ends of the Asian continent. The Temple of Heaven itself, unlike every other temple or palace building in China, is round - the others are all rectangular - and the intricate detail of its decorative exterior and interior is quite overwhelming. That was the last important site I visited in China. 

Then I went shopping! This is another field in which the Chinese are becoming world leaders, and I spent a few hours at the Silk Street Market, a seven-floor building lined with rows upon rows of stalls, offering everything from clothing   

to electronics, and most things in between. Fashion buyers often travel to Milan or Paris to choose their most select wares. Equally often, those choice items are manufactured in China. And here in China they are for sale at half the European price. Well, you may ask; China is well-known for its knock-off industry, so what’s a fake and what isn’t? A good question indeed. My personal rule of thumb is that clothes are probably what they say they are. They may have a slight defect in them, and if you have a really good magnifying glass, you may even find the defect. Alternately, they are likely extra stock that was manufactured over and above a particular order. So designer shirts, angora sweaters, and even shoes, are probably leftovers, while electronics are almost definitely fake look-alikes. In all cases, though, caveat emptor! 

For many a store keeper the chase is as important as is the sale. Bargain fairly and you will come away with wonderful items at great prices. 

Enjoy!