The ancient bell tower at night.
Most urban Chinese live in one, two, or three bedroom apartments. There are thousands of such buildings in every city that we visited.
Walking down a busy street in Xi’an I was surprised to see three dentists performing surgery before a floor-to-ceiling glass window in full view of passing crowds.
We visited China in 1992. Where there were poverty and bicycles there are modern malls and Audis, Porsches, and Cadillacs.
No longer your impoverished Chinese citizen.
All the faces and features of the warriors are unique.
The base cares for other rare and endangered animals over an area of 92 acres. Giant pandas, lesser pandas, black-necked cranes, white storks as well as over 20 species of rare animals are fed and bred here.
Pandas weigh only a few ounces when they’re born. They can’t stand for two months.
Leshan Giant Buddha, the largest stone sculpture of Buddha in the world. Carved out of a cliff face, it sits impassively against the mountain, hands on his knees and looking across the river with heavy lidded eyes. The Giant Buddha is about 71 meters high and 24 meters wide. T
We rode three different high speed trains in China. Top speed was 297 km per hour. The ride? Silky.
Parasols above the little lanes in Dali.
Called “yin and yang”, the hot pot consists of one side spicy, the other side not spicy.
Exotic house pets in Dali, China
Stone Forest is a notable set of karst formations in Shilin Yi Autonomous County, approximately 85km from Kunming. It has been known since the Ming Dynasty as the first wonder of the World.
Mao’s Great March crossed the Yangtse River here. A nearby shrine is a Chinese Communist hadj.
There are only forty million Chinese members of the Communist party, representing about 3% of the total population. Nevertheless, they make all the decisions. It costs about 20 yuan a month to remain a member, about $2.50. Leaving the party isn’t easy.
A Chinese photographer wanted us to pose together. The pleasure is all mine.
“The gorge, in which the Golden San River pounds furiously at its rocky shores in an awesome fashion, sen ding up to the sky full of white froth, is a dream place for adventurers.” TCT Travel brochure. It fails to mention that it, like every other place in China, is a haven for photo ops.
12,000 ‘
Huawei manufactures cameras with face-detection technology. The cameras are everywhere. At night the four LED lights at the bottom of the cameras not only light the streets but allow the cameras to operate twenty-four seven.
The largest Tibetan Buddhism monastery in Yunnan Province, housing more than seven hundred monks.
The monk on the right is 80. Being a construction worker at a Buddhist monastery keeps you looking young.
The monastery was undergoing reconstruction. The final steps were to lift the gilded metal to the top of the monastery. Who does the work? The seven hundred monks.
The illuminated tower to the right is a prayer wheel. When six or seven worshippers grab the cloth handles and work together the tower turns.
Not as ancient as it was some years ago before fire leveled 75% of the town. it was rebuilt to specs.
Sweepers are out day and night, in rain and shine, and there isn’t a piece of trash anywhere in China.
It costs about twenty-five dollars to visit this lake. After a fifteen mile bus ride, the nature lover visits a dozen only-in-China photo op places along the lake before walking a mile or so on a boardwalk for a half hour or so before boarding another bus for the return trip.
Zhangjiajie National Forest Park. We rode fourteen long escalators inside the mountain to be greeted at the top by this. Zhangjiajie is famous for its 3,000 vertical pillars, each hundreds of feet tall and covered in dense green foliage. These pillars were formed by erosion and draw in upwards of 30 million tourists every year.
Opened in 2015 the glass bridge was a lot less frightening in the fog and rain. Trevor is wearing one of the ubiquitous raincoats (10 yuan, or $1.25) favored by all the wet tourists. He chose blue. Mine is pink.
The director of the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics created a two hour show that we saw during an all-night rain. The set? The mountain itself.
Two of these make some sense, but I’m having trouble sleeping as I try to understand what “Monkey Marshal Assembling Soldiers” could possibly mean.