Highlights

Willy was one of the highlights of the trip, an outstanding guide who told us about everything we saw through the coach windows, answered all our questions except one, and kept us moving though fourteen-hour days.

You think I exaggerate? Hotel lobby at 0800 hrs, returning at 2130 hrs, or later, after, for example, the Forbidden City, a silk factory, Tienanmen Square, the cut-price market, two Chinese meals, and an acrobatic show. All of these interspersed with Willy telling us about Chinese schools, the one-child policy, calligraphy, the greening of Beijing, the Olympics, the Falun Gong and so on. The question he wouldn’t answer? As we approached Tienanmen Square he said: ‘Don’t ask me about tanks in the square. You probably know more about them than I do.’

The food was superb all through the trip. The staff expressed shame and indignation as their charges snuck off to McDonalds or Starbucks, but almost everyone tackled almost all the dishes almost all of the time. By the end of the trip even EM and GHH could pick up delicious morsels with chopsticks more often than not. We never quite broke away from ‘Chinese food as served to European visitors’, but we were prepared to believe Willy that we would prefer it that way. We also believed Herman, our guide in Hong Kong, that it was best not to ask what portion of the animal’s anatomy the various tidbits came from. The further south, on the whole, the more strange to us.

Great Wall

Of course in Beijing we went to the Great Wall. It lived up to expectations. Some of the steps along it are seriously steep and uneven, but few of our party were numbered amongst those tourists who clung to the hand-rails for dear life.

We also were led round the inevitable craft-industry-plus-chance-to-buy circuit. But this did produce some very interesting moments. Not least at the silk workshop, where we watched cocoons being unravelled, and were privileged to watch a fashion show. The jade centre did pretty well out of us too, but not as well as the tea house, where we learned which teas to ‘slurp’ and which ones to sip in noisy staccato — all to enhance flavour.

The evening kung fu show was an optional extra, but most people took the option and greatly enjoyed the mixture of high-quality martial arts and ballet. More unexpected was the visit to a new model village. A local boy made good (now a multimillionaire) has poured money into rebuilding and re-equipping his old home village. We had a more ordinary lunch in a private house than the ones we were given at restaurants, and were shown around the whole complex. Was it real? Was it typical? Is it the future of Chinese agriculture or a one-off? Hard to tell, but anyone on the trip who is doing Modern Studies Higher should be able to make excellent use of the experience in the ‘China Today’ questions.

Xian

Xian was hot. There were deaths from heatstroke reported in the South China Morning Post, though not in our highly air-conditioned environments. Unfortunately we were rather rushed around the Emperor’s Warriors, but by now some of the party were beginning to get the Qin Emperor roughly placed in history (think Hannibal) and distinguish him from the Qing Dynasty (think Scottish Enlightenment).

Then we flew down to the Yangxi. The scale was huge: simply amazing. Here we were in Wuhan, city of fourteen million people, a thousand miles from the sea, and the great yellow-brown surge of water was still busy with seagoing vessels. This was where Mao used to go swimming. Tony was another outstanding guide, full of chat and information about everything; he had just become a father, so he was interrogated pretty thoroughly on the one-child policy. Most of ‘old China’ got smashed up during the Cultural Revolution, but we enjoyed the bit that had been rebuilt in Wuhan, the Yellow Crane Tower, where DJC and AWM paid to dong the massive good-luck bell.

But our main target was a long drive upstream along a brand new expressway, through a military check-point to keep out spies, to the Three Gorges Dam. There were some discrepancies between what we had read about it in the press and Tony’s infectiously up-beat version, but the 185- metre-high wall is extraordinary. The scale is not easy to believe, except when you notice a massive truck or an oil tanker looking like a child’s toys.

Jingzhou

Tony then added, on his own initiative, what was one of the archaeological highlights of the trip. The Jingzhou museum houses the grave goods, and embalmed corpse, of the Marquis Yi of Zeng. By a happy accident, as at Vindolanda, the wet conditions had slowed down decay, so skin and bone, wood, leather, silk and lacquer had all survived, along with ceramics and bronze. The craftsmanship and beauty were breathtaking. (Fortunately the tomb, about the size of two Portakabins, was found after the worst bitterness of the Cultural Revolution had subsided, so all this evidence of China’s cultural heritage was restored and displayed with scholarship and pride.)

Most remarkable were the musical instruments, replicas of which we heard played. As well as zithers no different from modern Chinese ones, there were drums and fl utes. Also a stone xylophone, with sweetsounding and perfectly tuned stones hung on a frame. But literally incredible was the carillon of bells. There were sixty-four bronze bells, each one able to play two notes because they were elliptical, not round. They ranged in size from tea-cup to wash-tub and were on a frame so large that there was room for four players.

The drive from Wuhan to the Dam and back was long, but gave us a chance to see swathes of countryside. Rice, cotton, maize and lotus seemed to be the main crops, with carp also in the lotus ponds. There were traditional-looking water buffalo, simple peasant houses and traditional peasant sun-hats, but many of the farmers were cropspraying, and the signs on the big freeways were bi-lingual Chinese and English. We did not see much wildlife apart from blue-headed magpies, some sort of ibis, and eagles. (Don’t ask what sort. The Head of Biology said ‘Eagles’, and that will have to do.)

Hong Kong

Hong Kong was over-loaded with experiences, but was also more relaxed after the serious educational coach-rides in China. Herman explained ‘one country; two systems’ and our impression was that it was working pretty well. We only had two days in which to do about twenty things. Highlights included the Jumbo Floating Restaurant and the open-top bus ride through the streets at night. The steep Peak Tram, the big black butterfl ies and the Häagen-Dazs milk shakes gave the proper holiday atmosphere, as did swimming in the hotel pool — roof-top luxury under a tropical sun, overlooking Hong Kong harbour. Crossing from Kowloon to the Island on the Star Ferry is a special experience, worth repeating. The shoppers, for whom bargaining was becoming addictive, had no shortage of opportunities. But, without time for any profound investigations, the best thing was the place itself. Several of us resolved to return to Hong Kong for longer holidays.