Thursday, September 28, 2006
magic turtles
the first time i saw a turtle in the wild was on my first dive. it was a shore dive, shallow enough to run through our exercises. everyone pointed in excitement. it was quite a distance away, looking back at us, swimming in what we call sidestroke: body perpendicular to the seabed, paddling with one flipper, scrutinizing us over its baleful beak. they say to see a turtle on your first dive is lucky. i agree - just the thrill of spotting one is enough to make me feel lucky.
on my second dive, a huge fish appeared, long and brown and mottled white. was it an eel? i've no idea. i hung suspended in the middle of that blue and white gradient while it glided close, 8 feet of alien life. it ran a single eye over me, like all fish eyes it was indifferent, unfocused, seeing nothing and everything at once. then, like i was some unworthy bug trespassing in his sapphire kingdom, it gave just one lazy sinuous flick, turned and undulated out of sight. i looked around, still stunned, but no one appeared to have seen it. so much so that after a while, i wondered if i had imagined it at all. but my mind was made up: i loved diving.
that was 5 years ago.
last week, i finally continued that adventure. sadly redang is no longer pristine, its sands no longer white. i suppose some things don't last forever. if u wanna go, better be quick. wearing a wetsuit gave me three tones of tan. wearing a mask without power lenses gave me a niggling frustration and finally, a curiosity for contacts. but anyhow, add 9 dives to the 6 under my belt, and i'm able to tell u more.
pufferfish are earthy-coloured, and rectangular and boxy when deflated, tapering back into a narrow tail. lionfish are small, but appear big becoz of their inordinately long fins, which are more like serrations. they come in a variety of colours, bright and happy and deadly. jellyfish (yes, first time i've seen a jellyfish - at 60ft?) look like bubbles of pink milk, bobbing with the current's ebb. anemonefish live near the shelter of anemones. generally red/white-striped, their sizes range from your palm's length to the width of your thumbnail. nemo was a clownfish, a smaller species, which're always weaving in and out of the protective fronds of their homes. cuttlefish i saw on a night dive. i suppose it's common knowledge that they squirt ink to make their escapes, but to actually see it is something else. my instructor touched it lightly with his metal prod, and all i saw was a sudden bloom of ink. it was just... gone, now u see it now u don't, like a ninja vanishing spontaneously with his smoke bomb.
speed is the one thing common to all fish. they may move about dreamily, but come too close, and they veer and writhe away quicker than your imagination. we had the luck to have shoals of ikan bilis-y fish swarming the jetty, so we went for a swim with them. tens upon millions, and u never touch even one. they're grouped in streams, always consistent in switching directions, going under, over, speeding up, slowing down, all together - and Always patterned around u like u have some destructive aura. u'll never look at syncrhonised swimming the same way again.
on the night dive, we also saw a hermit crab, its shell conical and comical, legs scuttling like human fingers. my instructor flipped it on its back but it just flipped back indignantly and ran away (although of course, one of the first things u learn is to Never touch anything. especially corals). night diving blows your mind, becoz u are blind but for the spot of your torch and your buddies'. and when a fish appears in your spotlight it will be oblivious, and u will see that fish do not need to see. what u cannot fathom however, is all the other senses they possess, how they navigate and deal with pressure changes. suddenly fish don't seem familiar, all the varieties seem like different species of aliens. suddenly corals look like alien growth, sea cucumbers like alien slugs. and u'll realize u Are in an alien world, where even colours can mutate into other colours. and u'll continue in wonder and greater appreciation, still very blind, like a sohai following his little beam of light.
but in daylight, there are tables of corals made of branches of ochre and coffee, all ending at the same level height so they look like ascending shelves. there are pink stippled corals like enmeshed bulbs, with white vaginal lips hiding in the cleavages. there are corals like walls of armour on the rocks, lavendar fringed in salmon red. the plants! sticks peppered with grasses of jade. fingers of chartreuse with luminous lime tips, and purple ones in a similar fashion, but kick a little too hard and your little current will overturn it: u'll see they bloom from a teal carpet with periwinkle spots which flowers from another mysterious coral underneath. u're taught not to touch the corals, becoz some are poisonous and they're all pretty and fragile. i ran into a reef in the shallows: true enough they broke easily, but not without cutting me like diamonds.
back to the animals. of the more dangerous, i encountered moray eels, one hidden in a catacomb of coral so that i saw its body through one hole and its long aggresive jaw jutting out another. the second one was camouflaged in the serpentine coil of a flower-shaped coral. and sandwiched in a gully between two rocks lay a stingray: although immobile, the shape nature has given it announces clear enough, don't-mess-with-me.
and right after this stingray was... the second turtle in my life. when u (well, me at least) see a turtle, u just stop and watch. and watch and watch and watch, transfixed. it cruised by, steady and serene and haughty, while i hung around, able to do nothing but asphyxiate in awe. while they're magic all the same, between 8ft and 80ft it's a different kind of magic. we were at the front of the group, and when the olive creature turned upwards and crested a wall of rock... at the same moment, the rest of the divers appeared around the far side. they never caught a glimpse.
lucky indeed.
on my second dive, a huge fish appeared, long and brown and mottled white. was it an eel? i've no idea. i hung suspended in the middle of that blue and white gradient while it glided close, 8 feet of alien life. it ran a single eye over me, like all fish eyes it was indifferent, unfocused, seeing nothing and everything at once. then, like i was some unworthy bug trespassing in his sapphire kingdom, it gave just one lazy sinuous flick, turned and undulated out of sight. i looked around, still stunned, but no one appeared to have seen it. so much so that after a while, i wondered if i had imagined it at all. but my mind was made up: i loved diving.
that was 5 years ago.
last week, i finally continued that adventure. sadly redang is no longer pristine, its sands no longer white. i suppose some things don't last forever. if u wanna go, better be quick. wearing a wetsuit gave me three tones of tan. wearing a mask without power lenses gave me a niggling frustration and finally, a curiosity for contacts. but anyhow, add 9 dives to the 6 under my belt, and i'm able to tell u more.
pufferfish are earthy-coloured, and rectangular and boxy when deflated, tapering back into a narrow tail. lionfish are small, but appear big becoz of their inordinately long fins, which are more like serrations. they come in a variety of colours, bright and happy and deadly. jellyfish (yes, first time i've seen a jellyfish - at 60ft?) look like bubbles of pink milk, bobbing with the current's ebb. anemonefish live near the shelter of anemones. generally red/white-striped, their sizes range from your palm's length to the width of your thumbnail. nemo was a clownfish, a smaller species, which're always weaving in and out of the protective fronds of their homes. cuttlefish i saw on a night dive. i suppose it's common knowledge that they squirt ink to make their escapes, but to actually see it is something else. my instructor touched it lightly with his metal prod, and all i saw was a sudden bloom of ink. it was just... gone, now u see it now u don't, like a ninja vanishing spontaneously with his smoke bomb.
speed is the one thing common to all fish. they may move about dreamily, but come too close, and they veer and writhe away quicker than your imagination. we had the luck to have shoals of ikan bilis-y fish swarming the jetty, so we went for a swim with them. tens upon millions, and u never touch even one. they're grouped in streams, always consistent in switching directions, going under, over, speeding up, slowing down, all together - and Always patterned around u like u have some destructive aura. u'll never look at syncrhonised swimming the same way again.
on the night dive, we also saw a hermit crab, its shell conical and comical, legs scuttling like human fingers. my instructor flipped it on its back but it just flipped back indignantly and ran away (although of course, one of the first things u learn is to Never touch anything. especially corals). night diving blows your mind, becoz u are blind but for the spot of your torch and your buddies'. and when a fish appears in your spotlight it will be oblivious, and u will see that fish do not need to see. what u cannot fathom however, is all the other senses they possess, how they navigate and deal with pressure changes. suddenly fish don't seem familiar, all the varieties seem like different species of aliens. suddenly corals look like alien growth, sea cucumbers like alien slugs. and u'll realize u Are in an alien world, where even colours can mutate into other colours. and u'll continue in wonder and greater appreciation, still very blind, like a sohai following his little beam of light.
but in daylight, there are tables of corals made of branches of ochre and coffee, all ending at the same level height so they look like ascending shelves. there are pink stippled corals like enmeshed bulbs, with white vaginal lips hiding in the cleavages. there are corals like walls of armour on the rocks, lavendar fringed in salmon red. the plants! sticks peppered with grasses of jade. fingers of chartreuse with luminous lime tips, and purple ones in a similar fashion, but kick a little too hard and your little current will overturn it: u'll see they bloom from a teal carpet with periwinkle spots which flowers from another mysterious coral underneath. u're taught not to touch the corals, becoz some are poisonous and they're all pretty and fragile. i ran into a reef in the shallows: true enough they broke easily, but not without cutting me like diamonds.
back to the animals. of the more dangerous, i encountered moray eels, one hidden in a catacomb of coral so that i saw its body through one hole and its long aggresive jaw jutting out another. the second one was camouflaged in the serpentine coil of a flower-shaped coral. and sandwiched in a gully between two rocks lay a stingray: although immobile, the shape nature has given it announces clear enough, don't-mess-with-me.
and right after this stingray was... the second turtle in my life. when u (well, me at least) see a turtle, u just stop and watch. and watch and watch and watch, transfixed. it cruised by, steady and serene and haughty, while i hung around, able to do nothing but asphyxiate in awe. while they're magic all the same, between 8ft and 80ft it's a different kind of magic. we were at the front of the group, and when the olive creature turned upwards and crested a wall of rock... at the same moment, the rest of the divers appeared around the far side. they never caught a glimpse.
lucky indeed.
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
jiangnan pt 2
day 5: nanjing, hangzhou
a morning rain brings relief from 4 days of heat. we set off for sun yat-sen's mausoleum in an apt sombre mood. the place is a tribute to stone - huge blocks sculpted, erected, cantilevered - with no nail nor mortar. a bench by the side proves this, as vandals have pushed the heavy seat-block off its twin pedestals. we climb a symbolic 392 steps (3.92 mil population at the time) through the drizzle to reach his tomb. the anteroom has a stone sun seated high, in chinese traditional costume, with a regal set of jaw and bulging fierce eyes. the coffin room is cloaked in a hush as if u had walked into a giant conch, and the smell is of long-expired mothballs. in death, sun is clothed in western fashion, as portrayed by the effigy on his coffin's lid. his vampiric eyes are closed in peace but the aquiline nose still rises like a crag of unhewn marble. next stop is the nanjing museum, where we are ushered through the ancient jade exhibits with some half-hearted commentary and straight into the jade shop. jade also stands by a mirror test: true jade is able to scratch mirrors (or was it glass?)... and that was all i was able to absorb. then came the torrent of sales talk. i turned off until we reached
hangzhou, 4 hours by bus from nanjing. evening was already looming when our bus copped a slight malfunction. we lepaked for a half-hour opposite the public bus terminus, till another bus was arranged to ferry us off to a theater (with the very funny name of gold coast). we watched acrobatics, opera and a live band of erhu, pipa, guzhen and whatnot, telling among others, the tale of liangshanbo and zhuyingtai. the performances were good, stage props and lighting astounding, but the liangshanbo story is dumb to such an extreme i will not tell it here.
4 hours on the bus! this was a pretty empty day.
day 6: hangzhou
a full day is not enough to take in all of hangzhou's splendour. it is a garden city, dubbed 'city of romance', as it is the setting of 2 great love stories - the dumb liangshanbo and the legend of the white snake. it comes complete with hills and water, provided by west lake (xihu - the most prominent 1 of 36 xihu's) so that anywhere u point your camera u'll get a postcard picture. a short xihu cruise on an overcast morning will make your day before it starts. leifeng pagoda sits stout behind a screen of green, landmark of the white snake legend, and adopted symbol for suppressing the independant woman. baochu pagoda rises like a needle faraway, not a legend, but a national monument of sorts. 3 stone tables stand in the lake itself, a platform for lovers to light candles. each one holds 5 candles, if so lit on a full moon's, there will appear to be 32 moons... geddit? deep in an exceptional spot of the park is peony pavilion, named for the surrounding bushes of peonies, sadly not in bloom at the time. hangzhou is also home of legendary general yue fei, whose death as a direct consequence brought about the invention of a chinese snack we all know as... yaocharkuai.
lunch is at louwailou, a big renowned restaurant favoured by chiang kaishek, where the dongpo pork cubes are first class. after that is a stop at meijiawu, which boasts the famed dragon's well tea (and another very able salesman). then it's a walk about xihutiandi, a scenic yumcha area by the scenic lake again, and another shopping walk at yanan lu (where i finally burned my photos - i had been borrowing the tour leader's camera all this while), and after dinner, yet another short walk at qinghefang night market.
day 7: wuzhen, shanghai
on the bus, i couldn't help feeling we had barely scraped the surface of hangzhou - and of course other cities as well, considering the nature of such tours - when we arrived at wuzhen. on the way back to shanghai, wuzhen is a town so named for its black roofs. it runs along both banks of a river, and is a pure tourist town. it is still inhabited, and u will peek furtively behind the wooden shutters and the old carvings and the whole crafted image, to see very modern furnishings. with sampans and cute bridges, one zigzagging through a bamboo grove, the whole town retains a carefully preserved rustic charm. wuzhen is famous for rice wine.
then it's the bus again, and a visit the tomb of soong qingling, eldest of the soong sisters, wife of sun yat-sen. the guide goes through the formalities, telling her story and pointing out the appropriate photo spots, and once again, we are shanghaied - pun not intended - into an airconditioned receptacle within the office for a fengshui sales talk. and a tutorial of how to molest a pixiu (errrrrr, unicorn) for good luck. naturally, it is here where the old aunties hold up the whole group. evening falls as we rush to our huangpu cruise, where we see that the fengshui salesman was right... that the western side is the old area, with western-style buildings averaging 5, 6 storeys... and the eastern side is the industrial boom of skyscrapers and walls of lights. after dinner, another rushed 15 mins of the bund - shanghai tan, the western bank - and then a last shopping walk on nanjing lu.
so what's that about shanghai with the oriental pearl tower? well, in front of the tower is the world trade center, and in front of that is a monumental globe of the world, another globe with just the map of china, and a bridge connecting these two balls. symbolic, but d'u get the picture? if u stand somewhere outside peace hotel, u can see the shaft of the tower rising between them, ending with its pretty bulbous head. and if that's not enough, both tower and trade center are on pudong, the eastern bank of the huangpu river, which makes its opposite the western bank - puxi.
haha.
day 8: ...nothing much.
in the morning is a round of shopping (again...) at a rather sg wangish area called qipu lu, all cheap and cheap-looking clothes and imitation apparel and forgettable gadgets. then it's a tribal lunch, of the dai minority clan, which features dance perfomances with colourful costumes and best of all: a teapot with a four-foot spout, which allows for the waiter to refill your cup with apt theatrics.
then it's the airport... with significantly more bags to check-in than before... and 5 hours to home.
a morning rain brings relief from 4 days of heat. we set off for sun yat-sen's mausoleum in an apt sombre mood. the place is a tribute to stone - huge blocks sculpted, erected, cantilevered - with no nail nor mortar. a bench by the side proves this, as vandals have pushed the heavy seat-block off its twin pedestals. we climb a symbolic 392 steps (3.92 mil population at the time) through the drizzle to reach his tomb. the anteroom has a stone sun seated high, in chinese traditional costume, with a regal set of jaw and bulging fierce eyes. the coffin room is cloaked in a hush as if u had walked into a giant conch, and the smell is of long-expired mothballs. in death, sun is clothed in western fashion, as portrayed by the effigy on his coffin's lid. his vampiric eyes are closed in peace but the aquiline nose still rises like a crag of unhewn marble. next stop is the nanjing museum, where we are ushered through the ancient jade exhibits with some half-hearted commentary and straight into the jade shop. jade also stands by a mirror test: true jade is able to scratch mirrors (or was it glass?)... and that was all i was able to absorb. then came the torrent of sales talk. i turned off until we reached
hangzhou, 4 hours by bus from nanjing. evening was already looming when our bus copped a slight malfunction. we lepaked for a half-hour opposite the public bus terminus, till another bus was arranged to ferry us off to a theater (with the very funny name of gold coast). we watched acrobatics, opera and a live band of erhu, pipa, guzhen and whatnot, telling among others, the tale of liangshanbo and zhuyingtai. the performances were good, stage props and lighting astounding, but the liangshanbo story is dumb to such an extreme i will not tell it here.
4 hours on the bus! this was a pretty empty day.
day 6: hangzhou
a full day is not enough to take in all of hangzhou's splendour. it is a garden city, dubbed 'city of romance', as it is the setting of 2 great love stories - the dumb liangshanbo and the legend of the white snake. it comes complete with hills and water, provided by west lake (xihu - the most prominent 1 of 36 xihu's) so that anywhere u point your camera u'll get a postcard picture. a short xihu cruise on an overcast morning will make your day before it starts. leifeng pagoda sits stout behind a screen of green, landmark of the white snake legend, and adopted symbol for suppressing the independant woman. baochu pagoda rises like a needle faraway, not a legend, but a national monument of sorts. 3 stone tables stand in the lake itself, a platform for lovers to light candles. each one holds 5 candles, if so lit on a full moon's, there will appear to be 32 moons... geddit? deep in an exceptional spot of the park is peony pavilion, named for the surrounding bushes of peonies, sadly not in bloom at the time. hangzhou is also home of legendary general yue fei, whose death as a direct consequence brought about the invention of a chinese snack we all know as... yaocharkuai.
lunch is at louwailou, a big renowned restaurant favoured by chiang kaishek, where the dongpo pork cubes are first class. after that is a stop at meijiawu, which boasts the famed dragon's well tea (and another very able salesman). then it's a walk about xihutiandi, a scenic yumcha area by the scenic lake again, and another shopping walk at yanan lu (where i finally burned my photos - i had been borrowing the tour leader's camera all this while), and after dinner, yet another short walk at qinghefang night market.
day 7: wuzhen, shanghai
on the bus, i couldn't help feeling we had barely scraped the surface of hangzhou - and of course other cities as well, considering the nature of such tours - when we arrived at wuzhen. on the way back to shanghai, wuzhen is a town so named for its black roofs. it runs along both banks of a river, and is a pure tourist town. it is still inhabited, and u will peek furtively behind the wooden shutters and the old carvings and the whole crafted image, to see very modern furnishings. with sampans and cute bridges, one zigzagging through a bamboo grove, the whole town retains a carefully preserved rustic charm. wuzhen is famous for rice wine.
then it's the bus again, and a visit the tomb of soong qingling, eldest of the soong sisters, wife of sun yat-sen. the guide goes through the formalities, telling her story and pointing out the appropriate photo spots, and once again, we are shanghaied - pun not intended - into an airconditioned receptacle within the office for a fengshui sales talk. and a tutorial of how to molest a pixiu (errrrrr, unicorn) for good luck. naturally, it is here where the old aunties hold up the whole group. evening falls as we rush to our huangpu cruise, where we see that the fengshui salesman was right... that the western side is the old area, with western-style buildings averaging 5, 6 storeys... and the eastern side is the industrial boom of skyscrapers and walls of lights. after dinner, another rushed 15 mins of the bund - shanghai tan, the western bank - and then a last shopping walk on nanjing lu.
so what's that about shanghai with the oriental pearl tower? well, in front of the tower is the world trade center, and in front of that is a monumental globe of the world, another globe with just the map of china, and a bridge connecting these two balls. symbolic, but d'u get the picture? if u stand somewhere outside peace hotel, u can see the shaft of the tower rising between them, ending with its pretty bulbous head. and if that's not enough, both tower and trade center are on pudong, the eastern bank of the huangpu river, which makes its opposite the western bank - puxi.
haha.
day 8: ...nothing much.
in the morning is a round of shopping (again...) at a rather sg wangish area called qipu lu, all cheap and cheap-looking clothes and imitation apparel and forgettable gadgets. then it's a tribal lunch, of the dai minority clan, which features dance perfomances with colourful costumes and best of all: a teapot with a four-foot spout, which allows for the waiter to refill your cup with apt theatrics.
then it's the airport... with significantly more bags to check-in than before... and 5 hours to home.
Saturday, September 16, 2006
jiangnan pt 1
i am never ready for trips. i'm the type who starts packing early, and never get to finishing. it's always one instant when i snap out of laziness, count the changes of clothes/days, and place said number of t-shirts and underwear into the bag - there, 90% done! folded neatly too. the rest will be a long drag up till the last minute, literally, when they're already in the car and sounding the horn and i chuck in the remaining little items (i.e. thumbdrive) and zip up in frenzy. which results in
"i forgot something. i'm sure of it."
"i can't place it. but i'm damn sure i missed something. for sure."
"well i'll find out when i need it."
"..."
"damn. what Is it!"
day 1: shanghai
upon arrival at pudong airport we took another flight into shanghai city. reason i say flight is becoz the transit train literally flies: at 430 km/h, it does not touch its rails. touches nothing but air. go figure. switching train for bus, we then crossed the huangpu river. towering suspension cables reach down like claws to draw u onto nanpu bridge, as u look up at the four red words on the crossbar, proudly inscribed by deng xiaoping's hand, one of which is actually wrong. the bridge ends in a multilevel roundabout: from the bottom tier, the air is a web of flyovers. chenghuang temple is a shoppingtown paved with stone, of old-fashioned plazas and wooden frontages. a 5-storey xiaolongbao restaurant dominates the central square (each ascending storey increasingly expensive), while starbucks and haagen-dazs are alienated in a corner. the buildings are built to reflect olden architecture, strikingly incongruous with a white oblong box mounted on the restaurant's level 5: a huge-ass cctv camera. the bustle of chenghuang temple also hides an oddity: there is no temple. after dinner is a quick round of the oriental pearl tower, which contributes to another quirk of shanghai - more later.
the first cigaretteless day will cripple your consciousness. u will nod and keep nodding, then at first chance drop like a log and wake up fully refreshed at 1am.
day 2: taihu/xishan, suzhou
en route to suzhou we stop by xishan for lunch. xishan is an island in lake tai, 3rd largest freshwater lake in all china. how large? approx. 4 singapores or 2 hongkongs. this place is home to shigong hill and linwu cave (an easy walk), besides many other interesting rocky formations. the hill is steeped in buddhist lore. there is even a boddhisatva carved into the rock in a little cave - where phony fortune tellers have set up base. lunch is very salty, apparently becoz lake-dwellers get very bland fish. suzhou is a city where its people speak slow and gently, and our first big stop in jiangnan (the entire region south of The jiang). it is worth noting that most places here, in addressing girls, favour the more traditional "guniang" over "xiaojie", the latter suggesting easy virtue.
first stop suzhou: tiger hill. this historical/heritage site has big lush gardens in between huge stone courtyards and renowned rocks. truly. there is sword-testing rock, a boulder neatly cleaved by a purportedly invincible sword by some old king. there is 1000-people rock, a flat table where said king murdered 1000 people in a night. and opposite that is another rock on which a buddhist shrine is erected to honour the dead 1000. and then there is swords pool, a pond shaped like a sword, also in which the king buried a great many swords (or sooomething) underwater - still irretrievable with today's technology. tiger hill is undeniably beautiful despite the tall tales, its entrance well hidden from the city but its peak blatantly landmarked by... a leaning pagoda.
cigaretteless day #2: here i made my stand against the lethargy. becoz it is here where i finished camera space, and sought out the hotel's business center to do photo-transfer. and it is here as well where i finally find out what i missed in packing... my card reader. i brought along a 1gb thumbdrive, but not the card reader. sheer stupidity. i will always remember this night as i wandered suzhou streets in search of a cybercafe (hoping they might just have a right card reader), not even knowing what 'cybercafe' is in chinese, finally finding one where wow(arcraft) is going strong but where my search ends fruitless.
day 3: suzhou, wuxi
after tiger hill, it's only apt we see lion grove. rightly called a grove, this very green garden's main feature, ironically, is a rock maze. the layout is like a huge villa with little outhouses complete with little courtyards and side courtyards and middle courtyards. indoors are exhibits cordoned and labeled, outdoors are courtyards with fixtures of rock. grotesque and jagged, with ridges and ledges, blowholes, the lot. the rock maze has a picturesque lake with carp and bridge and pavilions. there is also a room overlooking it titled "pavilion of meditation/nodding off", i kid u not. i found all this very educational. i liked it. but the stop after lion grove was the first of the very commercial side of this tour. we visited the "#1 silk mill", where a talk on the process and a trip through the mill ends in the shop: bargain price, ladies and gentlemen, only for tours from malaysia, nowhere else, not shanghai, not nanjing, it's produced here as u just saw, therefore to be sold here, cheapest price u can get, finest silk in the world in china, finest silk in china here, suzhou. a lot of money exchange hands. we got on the bus to wuxi.
literally "no tin", wuxi was originally youxi, which attracted many miners and many wars. the rename finally brought peace. chinese can be gullible too. wuxi has smooth roads, cool traffic lights (6 round displays vertically), a massive industrial park, and on the outskirts, massive towns of film sets. we spent a hot afternoon in the set of the three kingdoms tv serial, built against the backdrop of the giant lake tai, then adjourned to... a teapot factory. when in wuxi, u must see 2 hu's - one with a cover and one without - taihu (the lake) and zisha hu (purple sand teapots). "purple sand" is a kind of rock found only in this area, high in metal content, also comes in green and yellow. it is becoming increasingly rare as the mines run low, and as the revered teapot master-sculptor has since passed away. i've forgotten his name, but those teapots handmade by him supposedly fetch a 5-digit renminbi sum now. even those sold to us, made by his disciples, are 4-digits.
at night is a shopping walk at wuxi's busiest crossroad, shouan si and... another street. i've forgotten that name but what i do remember though, is a baker's called... papparoti!
day 4: wuxi, nanjing
we start off the day with more salesmen! first stop, we learn that lake tai provides for different economies at different cities: fishing, beermaking, the movie industry, and here - pearl breeding. we learn about the mirror test: u scrape the pearls hard on a mirror and if it's genuine, a fine powder comes off with no visible harm to the pearl. we learn of pearl powder's health benefits and medicinal qualities, and then the salesgirls really let loose. i didn't want to learn anymore. after was a stop at the lingshan buddha, a 88m-tall bronze statue dwarfing the hills around. u have to climb 200 stairs to reach its toes. the original is a 8m buddha in the courtyard, which is not very spectacular in itself, becoz all worthy temples elsewhere have a staple of 8m buddhas. so they made a replica 11 times the size, and since it's right hand is raised in a benign gesture, there is a replica of just that giant hand in the front courtyard, for people like us to rub for good luck. very funny. wanna hear a funnier thing? the raised knob on the 88m buddha's head is a lightning arrestor.
another busride, into nanjing now. we stop by xuanwu lake, by the huge old city's wall, and visit one of the turrets. an artist by the name gao fan has set up studio there, painting hollowed crystal balls. really. and crystal bricks and crystal jars and teapots, all in miniscule reverse - becoz the crystal magnifies and reflects the artwork onto the outside. this has to be seen to be appreciated. then of course, they started selling it, which is when i discovered, decided and believed: that art and commerce Do Not Mix. later we jam our way to the changjiang bridge, cross to jiangbei, and u-turn back into jiangnan. the changjiang bridge is... the #1 bridge in china's hearts, is 2-layered (1 for cars, 1 for train), consists of 3 sections, has 4.5km of road, 6.7km of rail, took 8 years to build, with 9 supporting columns in the river, and a 10/10 beauty. considering it was completed in 1968, it's not much of a beauty now, but many chinese had willingly given their lives to its construction, and its completion had stunned then-president nixon and the rest of the world. a much better bridge runs beside it now, and although sitting in the new bridge's shadow, this bridge is still attractively jammed... becoz it was built by the rakyat, chairman mao decreed it forever toll-free.
after dinner at night, was a stopover outside confucius's temple. again, no temple per se, but a shrine to a great man. of course it was closed at that time, but outside, again very incongruously, is a pasar malam of peddlers and tourist trinkets.
**********
"i forgot something. i'm sure of it."
"i can't place it. but i'm damn sure i missed something. for sure."
"well i'll find out when i need it."
"..."
"damn. what Is it!"
day 1: shanghai
upon arrival at pudong airport we took another flight into shanghai city. reason i say flight is becoz the transit train literally flies: at 430 km/h, it does not touch its rails. touches nothing but air. go figure. switching train for bus, we then crossed the huangpu river. towering suspension cables reach down like claws to draw u onto nanpu bridge, as u look up at the four red words on the crossbar, proudly inscribed by deng xiaoping's hand, one of which is actually wrong. the bridge ends in a multilevel roundabout: from the bottom tier, the air is a web of flyovers. chenghuang temple is a shoppingtown paved with stone, of old-fashioned plazas and wooden frontages. a 5-storey xiaolongbao restaurant dominates the central square (each ascending storey increasingly expensive), while starbucks and haagen-dazs are alienated in a corner. the buildings are built to reflect olden architecture, strikingly incongruous with a white oblong box mounted on the restaurant's level 5: a huge-ass cctv camera. the bustle of chenghuang temple also hides an oddity: there is no temple. after dinner is a quick round of the oriental pearl tower, which contributes to another quirk of shanghai - more later.
the first cigaretteless day will cripple your consciousness. u will nod and keep nodding, then at first chance drop like a log and wake up fully refreshed at 1am.
day 2: taihu/xishan, suzhou
en route to suzhou we stop by xishan for lunch. xishan is an island in lake tai, 3rd largest freshwater lake in all china. how large? approx. 4 singapores or 2 hongkongs. this place is home to shigong hill and linwu cave (an easy walk), besides many other interesting rocky formations. the hill is steeped in buddhist lore. there is even a boddhisatva carved into the rock in a little cave - where phony fortune tellers have set up base. lunch is very salty, apparently becoz lake-dwellers get very bland fish. suzhou is a city where its people speak slow and gently, and our first big stop in jiangnan (the entire region south of The jiang). it is worth noting that most places here, in addressing girls, favour the more traditional "guniang" over "xiaojie", the latter suggesting easy virtue.
first stop suzhou: tiger hill. this historical/heritage site has big lush gardens in between huge stone courtyards and renowned rocks. truly. there is sword-testing rock, a boulder neatly cleaved by a purportedly invincible sword by some old king. there is 1000-people rock, a flat table where said king murdered 1000 people in a night. and opposite that is another rock on which a buddhist shrine is erected to honour the dead 1000. and then there is swords pool, a pond shaped like a sword, also in which the king buried a great many swords (or sooomething) underwater - still irretrievable with today's technology. tiger hill is undeniably beautiful despite the tall tales, its entrance well hidden from the city but its peak blatantly landmarked by... a leaning pagoda.
cigaretteless day #2: here i made my stand against the lethargy. becoz it is here where i finished camera space, and sought out the hotel's business center to do photo-transfer. and it is here as well where i finally find out what i missed in packing... my card reader. i brought along a 1gb thumbdrive, but not the card reader. sheer stupidity. i will always remember this night as i wandered suzhou streets in search of a cybercafe (hoping they might just have a right card reader), not even knowing what 'cybercafe' is in chinese, finally finding one where wow(arcraft) is going strong but where my search ends fruitless.
day 3: suzhou, wuxi
after tiger hill, it's only apt we see lion grove. rightly called a grove, this very green garden's main feature, ironically, is a rock maze. the layout is like a huge villa with little outhouses complete with little courtyards and side courtyards and middle courtyards. indoors are exhibits cordoned and labeled, outdoors are courtyards with fixtures of rock. grotesque and jagged, with ridges and ledges, blowholes, the lot. the rock maze has a picturesque lake with carp and bridge and pavilions. there is also a room overlooking it titled "pavilion of meditation/nodding off", i kid u not. i found all this very educational. i liked it. but the stop after lion grove was the first of the very commercial side of this tour. we visited the "#1 silk mill", where a talk on the process and a trip through the mill ends in the shop: bargain price, ladies and gentlemen, only for tours from malaysia, nowhere else, not shanghai, not nanjing, it's produced here as u just saw, therefore to be sold here, cheapest price u can get, finest silk in the world in china, finest silk in china here, suzhou. a lot of money exchange hands. we got on the bus to wuxi.
literally "no tin", wuxi was originally youxi, which attracted many miners and many wars. the rename finally brought peace. chinese can be gullible too. wuxi has smooth roads, cool traffic lights (6 round displays vertically), a massive industrial park, and on the outskirts, massive towns of film sets. we spent a hot afternoon in the set of the three kingdoms tv serial, built against the backdrop of the giant lake tai, then adjourned to... a teapot factory. when in wuxi, u must see 2 hu's - one with a cover and one without - taihu (the lake) and zisha hu (purple sand teapots). "purple sand" is a kind of rock found only in this area, high in metal content, also comes in green and yellow. it is becoming increasingly rare as the mines run low, and as the revered teapot master-sculptor has since passed away. i've forgotten his name, but those teapots handmade by him supposedly fetch a 5-digit renminbi sum now. even those sold to us, made by his disciples, are 4-digits.
at night is a shopping walk at wuxi's busiest crossroad, shouan si and... another street. i've forgotten that name but what i do remember though, is a baker's called... papparoti!
day 4: wuxi, nanjing
we start off the day with more salesmen! first stop, we learn that lake tai provides for different economies at different cities: fishing, beermaking, the movie industry, and here - pearl breeding. we learn about the mirror test: u scrape the pearls hard on a mirror and if it's genuine, a fine powder comes off with no visible harm to the pearl. we learn of pearl powder's health benefits and medicinal qualities, and then the salesgirls really let loose. i didn't want to learn anymore. after was a stop at the lingshan buddha, a 88m-tall bronze statue dwarfing the hills around. u have to climb 200 stairs to reach its toes. the original is a 8m buddha in the courtyard, which is not very spectacular in itself, becoz all worthy temples elsewhere have a staple of 8m buddhas. so they made a replica 11 times the size, and since it's right hand is raised in a benign gesture, there is a replica of just that giant hand in the front courtyard, for people like us to rub for good luck. very funny. wanna hear a funnier thing? the raised knob on the 88m buddha's head is a lightning arrestor.
another busride, into nanjing now. we stop by xuanwu lake, by the huge old city's wall, and visit one of the turrets. an artist by the name gao fan has set up studio there, painting hollowed crystal balls. really. and crystal bricks and crystal jars and teapots, all in miniscule reverse - becoz the crystal magnifies and reflects the artwork onto the outside. this has to be seen to be appreciated. then of course, they started selling it, which is when i discovered, decided and believed: that art and commerce Do Not Mix. later we jam our way to the changjiang bridge, cross to jiangbei, and u-turn back into jiangnan. the changjiang bridge is... the #1 bridge in china's hearts, is 2-layered (1 for cars, 1 for train), consists of 3 sections, has 4.5km of road, 6.7km of rail, took 8 years to build, with 9 supporting columns in the river, and a 10/10 beauty. considering it was completed in 1968, it's not much of a beauty now, but many chinese had willingly given their lives to its construction, and its completion had stunned then-president nixon and the rest of the world. a much better bridge runs beside it now, and although sitting in the new bridge's shadow, this bridge is still attractively jammed... becoz it was built by the rakyat, chairman mao decreed it forever toll-free.
after dinner at night, was a stopover outside confucius's temple. again, no temple per se, but a shrine to a great man. of course it was closed at that time, but outside, again very incongruously, is a pasar malam of peddlers and tourist trinkets.
