My dad has been studying Chinese culture since the mid 60s. He visited Taiwan several times in the 60s and 70s before visiting the mainland in 1981. Some of my fondest memories from childhood involve watching hours and hours of slides as he curated the photos he took. We figured out that this was either his 23rd or 24th trip to China.
In 1998, went to china with my dad. It was 16 days of crazy travel, amazing food, and great memories. I'll have to dig up my slides from that trip to compare. I met and married my wife in the following year, and it has been a dream of ours to go to China with my dad. Circumstances were just right for this year, so we bit the bullet, spent the money, and went. My dad, my wife, and I set off for a two week adventure through China.
In two weeks we visited Beijing, Xi’an, Yangshou, and Hong Kong. There’s so much to say - and so many pictures. Here are some initial images and thoughts:
Beijing is indescribably big, and yes - fairly crowded.
The air quality is noticeably bad. It gives you a consistent tickle in the back of your throat. On a bad day, we needed masks.
This is pointed directly at the sun at about 3 in the afternoon.
We saw many of the touristy things, the great wall:
Tiananman Square is solemn for me. But it’s bustling with people.
The Forbidden City is surreal. The scale of this place is so ridiculously big. You go in, courtyard after courtyard. It’s simply beautiful.
the Temple of Heaven
Beijing is already lobbying (and advertising) for the 2022 winter olympics…
All of those sites are great - but Beijing is also a thoroughly modern city.
Xi’an is disturbingly big. It is the ancient capitol of China. In years past, my dad would intentionally plan to take tour groups from a bustling city like Beijing - and “take a step back in time” to the quieter, smaller city of Xi’an. This is no longer the case. Our tour guide and Wikipedia agree that Xi’an has about 8 million people. I’m here to tell you that they’re both lying, or the city is overbuilt by a factor of two. Have you seen the movie Inception? Rows and rows of concrete skyscrapers going further into the distance than eyes can see. This growth is almost all in the last 10 years.
On a positive note, Xi’an had some great street food, some fun markets, and there were still some pockets of peacefulness in the humongous city.
These are in Xi’an
and this pagoda
After Xi’an, we went to Yangshou, which used to be a small town outside of Guilin, which used to be a small town where you would go to see these:
but in the last 20 or so years, Yangshou went from approximately 30,000 people to over 350,000, complete with shopping districts and freeways and HUGE jumbotron ad boards. Guilin is now over 1 million people.
The people I met in China were genuinely kind.
They love having their pictures taken with us, especially my wife.
Superstition seems to play a big role in Chinese Tourism. This guy is waiting his turn to touch a big cauldron in the forbidden city.
Here you can see where the metal has been WORN AWAY from the last 50 or so years of visitors rubbing it “for good luck”.
People even steal the little brass/gold nails used to attach the decorations.
The food in China is stupid good and almost disturbingly cheap.
I'm out of time for now. We finished off in Hong Kong. I'll add more pictures of that later.
The title of this post may sound a little dramatic. But I could see it on my dad's face almost the entire trip. He was struggling with the accelerated pace at which China is developing. In a conversation with him this week he said "Xian is now too big for me to enjoy." It's not good or bad that there is all of this development, it just is. And it was really interesting to watch my dad process it live.
I’m still working through all of the pictures and my notes and my thoughts and feelings. In the end, this photo sums up a big part of this trip: It was a grand adventure with my dad.
I always wonder what is going through the older generations mind when they see the world bustling and growing, the exponential growth we are having is insane. I have looked at my grandmas eyes when we go through a big city that she hasn't been to in years, and in her eyes, when they stay fixed on all the passing massive buildings, is amazement, sadness, and fear. Or so it seems to me, I've never bothered to ask her.
Mandarin always sounds like such an imaginitive, descriptive language. Maybe that is generally the case when logographic languages are translated into alphabet-based interpretations? We should send all climate change denialists to Beijing for one week, once a year. Every year. Thanks for the report.Joyful Rendezvous upon Pure Ice and Snow
I've seen the same with Arabic translations. I suspect it's an artefact of translation and how idiom translates, not the original language itself. Here's one from Oman, advertising the Khareef rainy season:Mist of JOY! JOY with MISTY Mountains and Springs!
Scroll around in the lush GREEN Mountains!
Shower and get wet in the Chilly Weather!
Yeah it's actually not incredibly descriptive from what I've heard based on living in China for 3 months and talking to a lot of native Mandarin speakers. They generally use simple words and are less likely to have flowery language for different occasions, which leads to them having difficulty distinguishing what English words are formal and informal. The example here is definitely embellished by the translator, as the left group of characters basically says "pure ice" and the right side is kind of like "intensely emotional date."
That food looks so similar to the dishes in one of my favourite restaurants here in Sydney, which I assume is reasonably authentic since it's always packed with Chinese/Chinese Australians and many of the staff speak nothing but Mandarin. I probably tend to choose the more "westernised" dishes such as "rainbow beef" but the woman next to me last time was eating what looked like that exact same soup.
Wow, this is amazing, your photography is excellent! Thanks so much for sharing, I'll be in Beijing tomorrow, and you're giving me a lot to look forward to!
I guess he's probably good up for advice because he's doing something related to these guys https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucius_Institute but thanks for the offer! I'll show him some of your pics up there if I get the chance.