Arriving in Wuhan

We managed to sleep this morning until 3:15 am which is an hour later than yesterday. We read and watched CNN which is the only thing we could find in English on the hotel television. We made our way to breakfast at 6:30 joining a nice couple from Denton, Texas. Mark and Cindy joined us around 7:15. The breakfasts at the hotel have been very good with a nice mix of Chinese and western choices. Since we had sent our checked bags out to be loaded the night before, we only had to gather our carry-on items before checking out of the Shanghai Four Seasons. It is a very elegant downtown hotel that obviously caters to well-to-do business people.  Viking typically uses exceptionally nice hotels for their land based touring.

Bronze container at Hubei Provincial Museum

We boarded the bus at 8:15 and made the drive to the Shanghai airport about an hour away. Security at Chinese airports is very tight. We were sent through security screening just to enter the terminal. We had a second screening to get to the departure area that was similar the TSA screening in the US except was much more extensive. After passing through security we walked around the concourse for nearly an hour until time to begin boarding for our flight to Wuhan.

Unlike our flight into Shanghai, the majority of the passengers other than our group were Chinese who were traveling between the two large cities of Shanghai and Wuhan. We were pleased to have an interesting seatmate in an older lady, Joan, from New Zealand who currently resides in Nova Scotia. Her brother, Mike, was accompanying her.  He resides in Australia.  Joan is quite a character and provided interesting conversation during the 80 minute flight. She was upset because she had a small spike under the tip of her cane that was helpful when walking on ice in Nova Scotia.  The Chinese security clipped the spike off with wire cutters when she sent it through security.  Lunch on the flight was very traditional Chinese. Mary had chicken with noodles and I had a spicy beef with rice.

Ancient bronze bells at Hubei Provincial Museum

On arriving at Wuhan we only needed to confirm our checked bags and get on the bus to go to the Hubei Provincial Museum in Wuhan.

A special exhibit at the museum is on the Warring States period around 475-221 BC. A feudal lord, Marquis Yi, had an impressive set of 64 gold inlaid bronze bianzhong bells that are perfectly tuned to a five octave range. We also saw a number of artifacts from the period including many jade carvings and bronze castings. Our guide, Patrick, took us around the museum speaking to us through the earpieces we were issued earlier in the trip. We spent about 90 minutes in the museum then boarded the bus for our short drive to the Emerald Viking River ship moored on the Yangtze River. 
Even though it is mid-September, the weather was very warm in the upper 80s. Because of the typical heat, Wuhan is called one of the three furnaces. The population of Wuhan is “only” a little over 10 million although the metro area has over 18 million people.  We still can’t get over the staggering size of Chinese cities.

Ancient bronze bells at Hubei Provincial Museum

We unpacked in our staterooms then walked around the ship a bit. There are a number of differences in the ship we took on the Rhine. The Emerald has only one dining area unlike our prior ship which had a formal and informal area for meals. The sun deck is much smaller but the cabins may be larger and each cabin has a small balcony with a couple of chairs. We sat on the sun deck briefly and watched some of the kites that people were flying to heights that were pretty impressive.

The western style dinner at 7 pm was very good. There were several menu choices and we were all pleased with our selections. We were joined at our table by two interesting couple, Willie and Mary with Minnesota and Dave and Sandra from York, England. Dave, a retired York police officer, was interesting and Willie provided entertaining dinner conversation.

Jade carving at Hubei Provincial Museum

After dinner there was a cruise briefing by the program director, Angie Wang, and the hotel manager, Enrico. We concluded our evening by siting on the observation deck and watching the light show on the buildings of Wuhan along the Yangtze. The ship cast off at 10 pm to travel up the river, so we made our way down to our second floor staterooms and turned in hoping to be able to sleep in longer. Mary and Cindy were planning to attend the Tai Chi classes on the fifth floor deck each morning at 7 am.

Old Shanghai

Because our internal clocks are still running on Eastern Time, we both awoke at 2 am this morning. I guess our brains still recognize it as 2 pm. We did some reading and watched the British CNN before showing and dressing to go to breakfast at the Shanghai Four Seasons Hotel at 6:30. We ate with a nice couple from Cincinnati. The breakfast was very good. There was a nice mix of American and Chinese traditional breakfast favorites. We especially liked the fruit selections although it took a while for us to recognize the cut dragon fruit. 

Shanghai Skyline

From breakfast we boarded thee buses to drive to the Huangpu River that divides old and modern Shanghai. Our guide, “Patrick” pointed out many of the buildings in both areas and their importance or history. Our group especially enjoyed the beautiful buildings in the Bund area that were built in the late 1800s when Shanghai was an important link between the East and West.  We watched the shipping traffic on the river then drove to the Old Shanghai Quarter where we went to the historic Yu Gardens. This area is only about 2 acres in size and didn’t have a lot of variety of flowers but had many carvings and rockeries. We admired the many carved stone figures, lions and dragons throughout the gardens and on the walls.

Zig zag bridge at Yu Gardens

Although small, the Yu Gardens were beautiful and interesting. We were struck by the zig zag paths, bridges and walkways. We later learned that Chinese traditional belief holds that evil forces are unable to go around sharp turns. Similarly, many of the buildings in the Yu Gardens as well as throughout older areas of China have a high threshold at the doors. This is because they believed the evil spirits could not get over this obstacle.

Rooftop dragon at Yu Gardens

After leaving Yu Gardens we walked around many of the shops in Old Shanghai. We stopped in a couple of tea shops and sampled the selections of tea being sold. Shanghai has a long history in the preparation and marketing of tea. We went to a shop selling silk clothing that is operated by the Chinese government. Silk also has been a major part of the Shanghai economy for centuries. This shop sells only the highest quality silk and is priced very high. Cindy picked up a couple of scarves but we were priced out of most items.

Hand embroidered red panda on silk

On the way to lunch we stopped at shop where hand silk embroidery is done on silk cloth. These beautiful images typically take months for the artist to create. Patrick told us that in the past young women of high social standing would do beautiful embroidery to demonstrate their suitability as a wife.  The silks were priced from $2000 to $10,000 US dollars which makes sense given the time and skill required. We did fine until Mary saw a hand embroidered red panda cub. It was priced at $5000 but the salesman said that we would come down on the price since the frame had a scratch on it. He said that a similar item from the same artist recently sold for nearly 70,000 Yuan which is about $10,000 US dollars. We considered the art but kept moving as she thought about it. When he offered it at $2400 including shipping we decided to make the purchase. We didn’t want it shipped until after October 2 since we will be here in China until then. Also, October 1-8 is a national holiday in China so it will be mid-October before it will ship. The little panda is pretty cute and will be a great addition to our new home.

Mary & Cindy shopping in Old Shanghai

We had a dim sum lunch that had many traditional Chinese foods. We especially liked the dumpling which is a bread or dumpling surrounding a bit of pork, There was rice, noodles, meats, soups and vegetables that were placed on a turntable in the center of our table so we could eat family style. Everyone enjoyed the meal.

After lunch we had some free time in Old Shanghai that we spent walking around and checking out local shops and attractions before taking the bus to the Shanghai Museum. Our guides, Patrick and Sissy, provided us with devices that we could use to tell us more about selected exhibit items in English by pressing buttons on the remote control sized devices. The museum was large with many rooms on each of the four floors. We decided to start in the jade room of the fourth floor where we saw ancient items made of jade that have been dated to be as much as 4000 years old. Ceremonial swords and disks called bi were carved of jade stone at a time when no metal tools were available. From the jade rooms we went to the furniture rooms and saw ornately carved and lacquered chairs, thrones, beds and other items made from exotic Asian, Indian and African woods like sandalwood, rosewood and ebony. There were also items that were finished with the red lacquer that is so unique to Chinese furniture. We realized that we were nearly at the end of the 90 minutes that we had available for the museum.

Steve & Mary on the bus in Shanghai

We caught out bus back to the Four Seasons for a brief rest and to prepare for the evening activity. Since we will be flying to Wuhan on Sunday we did some packing and preparing for the next week. We went to the hotel restaurant for dinner which was a lot of seafood, sushi and many other Chinese and western foods. For desert, I had a bowl of ice cream, a small scoop each of ginger and matcha which is a flavor from tea. Both were very good.

After dinner we went to the room to prepare for the evening activity, a show of Chinese acrobats at the Portman Ritz Carlton. The bus arrived at 7 pm and the show started promptly at the advertised time of 7:30. The acrobats were very talented and put on a great show. I guess we expected the kind of plate juggling stunts that our generation used to see on the Ed Sullivan show but there was a nice variety of comedy, romantic and artistic scenes that concluded promptly at 9 pm as scheduled. We kept nodding off during the show not because it wasn’t good but rather because we are off our sleep schedules.

We finalized our packing and put our bags out to be taken to the airport for our part of the trip that will be on the ship.

Arriving in China

We departed our home in Georgetown at 9 am for our 1:30 pm departure from Cincinnati airport. As we have done on prior trips from CVG, we used the OneStopParking through the Hilton Hotel near the airport. We arrived at the Hilton in less than an hour and caught the included shuttle to our gate at 10 am. We both made it through security quickly and easily and had our lunch at the gate after walking around the concourse several times. There are nice displays in the concourses from the Cincinnati Museum Center as well as beautiful photos of iconic Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky attractions. We knew that our flight would be long and we wanted to move as much as possible before we had to be confined to an airplane seat.

The connecting flight to Detroit departed and landed on time. We were surprised that the Detroit airport was rather small and appeared to serve only Delta flights. However, while the airport is generally small, the main concourse is extremely long. There is even an overhead train that transports passengers to stops within Concourse A. Since we had a 90 minute layover we walked through the long concourse A as well as much smaller B & C. We were very surprised that there were no displays for tourists on the industrial or music history of the city. We would have thought that a display of vintage cars or photos of early factories would be set up. About the only “Detroit thing” was that in the tunnel between concourses there was Motown music playing.

Our flight from Detroit to Shanghai departed on time for the over 13 hour trip over the North Pole. The aircraft was as comfortable as it could be for a flight of that length. Passengers were a mix of tourists, business people and Chinese nationals returning home. Meals on the flight were good having choices between American or Chinese dishes. The seatback screens offered a good variety of classic and newer movies. I watched Won’t you be my Neighbor?, Chappaquidick, and several others in addition to turning the language option to German to watch classics like Back to the Future

We arrived in Shanghai around 6:30 pm local time which was 6:30 am by our body clocks. Getting through entry to China was interesting. We had completed a through application for our tourist visas then filled out more forms at the airport. Coming through the entry we were photographed again and fingerprinted. Since this is for all non-Chinese citizens, it took a while to get through. One Asian woman ahead of Mary in line took forever to get an electronic scan of her fingerprints. We picked up our bags and quickly found the Viking representatives who took us to the bus carrying us from the airport across the city to our hotels. A quick stop in the bathrooms provided our first surprise in China. Although there were some western style toilets, most of the bathroom stalls were porcelain holes in the floor. There were symbols on the doors of the stalls identifying which kind of facility was in that stall. We made a note for future reference to look for the US toilets if possible in going to the bathrooms.

We were surprised to learn that Shanghai is the world’s second largest city with over 25 million residents. Another 10 million commute in from the surrounding area each day. With a total of 10 million residents, New York City is dwarfed by Shanghai.  As we drove in our guides pointed out local landmarks and attractions. We are anxious to see more of the city.

Our hotel, the Four Seasons, is a beautiful luxury downtown hotel. Our room on the 22nd floor is very nice, and the Whittingtons are just up on the 24th floor. Our guides told us to only drink bottled water in China using tap water only for washing. We meet our guide, Patrick, at 8 am on Friday for a tour of the city including the famous gardens. We are sorry that we will be unable to meet up with my former student, Keri, and her family while we are here but the schedule is just packed full.