Travels in China

[Birdjaguar]

Travels in China

In a complete knockoff of Warpus’ great travel threads, I will recount my 2018 trips to China. My adventures there are really three different trips. The first two were combined and the third involved a second flight overseas. This was my first trip to Asia.

Ask anything you like at any time.

Unless people ask, most of the business stuff I will leave out and focus on the cultural part. Most of my pictures of the business trip are people and are not very interesting anyway. The best stuff is in part two.

The reason for my trip was business. Our Think Tank group was invited to meet with different groups of business leaders to meet people with money and influence, learn about how China does business and pitch our particular brand of thinking about economic development. In October 2017 we had sponsored a strategic summit in Albuquerque and invited over 100 Chinese businessmen to come to the US to discuss how we might build a trusted network that would allow both NM and China to benefit economically. A Chinese business associate who lives in NM was our partner in this and we used his contacts to make it all work.

The summit was successful and as a follow up we made plans to visit China in March of 2018. Four of us would go. We would visit 7 cities over two weeks and meet with many of the folks who came to the US in 2017 plus a host of new people. None of us spoke any Chinese; our US associate did and we had translators arranged in each city. I had a Lonely Planet Guide to China. For the business part of the trip all of our accommodations and transport were taken care of and paid for in advance (not the flight to China though).

Since it was going to be my first trip to China, I decided to extend my visit and spend two more weeks traveling in China on my own and see the things we missed during the business part.

After I returned to the US I was invited by one of our contacts to return to China in June for a week to contribute to two projects he had underway.

Business trip
· Beijing (airport)
· Kunming
· Nanning
· Ganzhou
· Shenzhen/Guangdong
· Xi’an
· Baoji

Personal Travel
· Xi’an
· Pingyao
· Beijing
· Changsha
· Zhangjiajie Park
· Beijing (airport)

Second Business Trip
· Hong Kong (airport)
· Shenzhen
· Changsha
· Changde
· Hong Kong (airport)

This map shows the cities I visited and trains I took. All other travel was by air. The fast trains are in green and the slow train in red.

Red dot cites: first business trip
Green dot cities: personal trip
Blue dot cities: second business trip (June)

China is a big place

Distances (straight line):
· Beijing to Kunming: 1200 miles
· Beijing to Changsha: 850 miles
· Beijing to Xi’an: 600 miles
· Nanning to Ganzhou: 500 miles

Spoiler :

 

[Birdjaguar]

I arrived in Beijing at about 6:00 AM local time and had 3 hours before my flight out to Kunming, 1200 miles away in southwest china near Vietnam. The airport was pretty empty and wayfinding was Ok. Security for boarding was very quick and efficient and people intensive. Metal detectors and everyone gets a pat down that took 20 seconds at most. No Chinese needed.

Here is my plane to Kunming:

 

[Birdjaguar]

More passengers boarding the plane and taking off from Beijing. the bus in the background of the first pic brought us to the plane. The heavy pollution in Beijing is evident. Two other tings. Notice all the people taking pictures. Everyone in China takes pictures all the time. And, If you follow a line down from the front edge of the bus, you will see one of my business associates, elbows out, taking a picture. We met our other folks in Kunming.

 

[Birdjaguar]

These next pictures are flying over Shanxi province and the mountains along the Yellow River north of Xi'an to
our brief stop over in Dazhou sw of Xi'an. My in flight meal is also included. I did not expect such rugged mountains in that part of China.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Dazhou stop over. Dazhou is sw of Xi'an and in much more accommodating terrain. These pics were taken on approach to the airport. The metro area is about 1.6 million people (2010). I only saw the airport. I saw my first squat toilet and peed.

 

[Samez]

I have been to China in 2004 myself and would have really liked to see Xian but could not get there.
Hangzhou, Suzhou and Shanghai were really worth visiting back than, but a lot might have changed since then.
Hongkong is listed as airport only on your travels. Imho it was a very interesting place due to the cultural fusion and I would love to go there again.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I have been to China in 2004 myself and would have really liked to see Xian but could not get there.
Hangzhou, Suzhou and Shanghai were really worth visiting back than, but a lot might have changed since then.
Hongkong is listed as airport only on your travels. Imho it was a very interesting place due to the cultural fusion and I would love to go there again.

I will have pics of Xi'an later in the thread. And yes, for me HK was just an airport. China is like the US in size and it cannot all been seen in one or two trips. I was lucky to see so many different places.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Kunming was mostly business, but I did get some tourist time. Kunming is in Yunnan Province and close to the tropics, but 6600 feet in altitude. It was much warmer than Beijing and very pleasant in early March. Urban population is about 4.5 million so it is a small city. My hotel room was certainly up to budget western standards. $40 a night for a large room, huge bathtub, and the ever present tea set. View from my window.

 

[Birdjaguar]

My first breakfast in China. This little restaurant was across the street from our hotel. Everyone got some variation of noodles and veggies with or without meat in broth.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Kunming was my first China experience and much of what I saw there matched what came later.

• Not very crowded streets
• Flowers and trees everywhere
• Unusual vehicles in use
• Shopping malls without crowds
• Air Pollution in every city

 

[Birdjaguar]

In Kunming we did get a chance to visit the Yunnan Museum of Ethnic folk Customs. It was late in the day and the museum was closed, but the park area around it had shops that were open. Here is the gate and its pagoda.

Yunnan being located so close to Vietnam, Laos etc, is very diverse ethnically and one of the provinces goals is to use that to build tourism. that is one of the things we were looking at.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Yunnan Ethnic Villages Park, Kunming

The 25 different ethnic groups found in the province each have their own "village" in the park to show off their culture. We spent an hour or so learning about tea in a tea shop and had samples of different varieties. The woman in the white fur collared coat was our hostess. Making and drinking tea can be a very elaborate process. There was not a teabag to be found. As a good tourist, I bought some tea to take home. Little did I know that in China making new business acquaintances involves gift giving by the hosts and it was almost always tea.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Our typical routine was arrive noonish in a new city; get settled and have a dinner with those we were meeting with; The next day we spent in meetings or touring business locations and had business style lunches and dinners. We said goodbye the following morning and traveled to the next city. Rinse and repeat. I'll get into business meals later. As we left out hotel on day three of being in Kunming, I took a picture of the entrance to our hotel. It was on a not very grand side street.

Our next stop was Nanning.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Nanning, Guangxi Province

Its a fair sized city of over 7 million. The airport is new and modern.

 

[Moriarte]

Thanks for this, very interesting. I wonder why “everyone taking pctures all the time”. Addiction to social media?

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Great thread, bird, love the food & tea pictures!

Thanks for this, very interesting. I wonder why “everyone taking pctures all the time”. Addiction to social media?

Bird took pictures, too, and shared them on a social platform. I don't think social posturing / social media addiction is the culprit here, in fact many people with social media addiction don't even make content, they just scroll through instagram for 10 hours a day. It seems everyone wants his own, very personal version of an event. I think the fact this behavior is so incredibly wide-spread has something to do with us wanting to solidify some event as a memory, or as a marker of what makes us unique, often via a photo, "material proof" of our authenticity, which seems under siege in the modern world.

do you even know those "asian tourists" (yeah, I know the stereotype) upload these pictures they take to social media? no, we have no clue what they end up doing with them. my guess is 99% of them will be digital baggage. take a photo, never look back or do anything with it. maybe delete it years later.

 

[Moriarte]

The particular addiction of photographing everything in sight is more spread in the East if tales of foreign travellers and my own observations of different kinds of foreign tourists are any measure. People are fishing for gratification from likes or in any other form available on their social platform to the point it becomes a disturbing habit of documenting life almost entirely. It’s not all about gratification, of course, but there is a substantial element of it.

But I apologize and won’t derail any further. Please continue, Bird.

 

[Darsnan]

Dazhou stop over.... I only saw the airport. I saw my first squat toilet and peed.

View attachment 556403

This reminds me of my time in South Korea (89-90) what with the juxtaposition of first world airline and railway service with third world open sewers and ox drawn carts. Did you experience any of those contrasts in your visit or dealings with your hosts? I always found it quite interesting in South Korea that the ancient looking mom-and-pop shops with their traditionally dressed hosts were quite adept at the age old tradition of haggling as well as being able to operate credit card scanners (which at that time were just being rolled out, so were cutting edge).

D

 

[Birdjaguar]

This reminds me of my time in South Korea (89-90) what with the juxtaposition of first world airline and railway service with third world open sewers and ox drawn carts. Did you experience any of those contrasts in your visit or dealings with your hosts? I always found it quite interesting in South Korea that the ancient looking mom-and-pop shops with their traditionally dressed hosts were quite adept at the age old tradition of haggling as well as being able to operate credit card scanners (which at that time were just being rolled out, so were cutting edge).

D

Yes, but less so during the business part of my trip. We were usually shielded from it. As a rule though I did not see any extreme poverty. Some of that was because I didn't have a car to explore cities and towns freely, I guess.

 

[Birdjaguar]

But I apologize and won’t derail any further. Please continue, Bird.

Comments are welcome; no problem.