Three Stone Cats at the Wall

These two lions - a male and a female - have been guarding this building (which is part of the Great Wall) for several hundred years. How to tell the male from the female?

Look under the lifted front paw of each - the male has a globe-like orb under his (right front) paw, and the female has a new-born lion cub, on its back, beneath her (left front) paw. This pair of symbolic stone lions appeared in many in Beijing and Chongquig, but lions live in Africa and India, but not in China, I think - and tigers are found in Asia and not Africa.

So the mystery was why the ancient Chinese would have used lions as their icons, not tigers. But I assume the ancient Chinese would not have wasted so much precious stone and time making statues of the wrong cat. One person guessed that these WERE tigers, but tigers do not have manes.

Two Statues

Here is a strange one. In a park was this bronze statue of a woman with the head of a duck. Not a literal duck, but a stylized one. And right across the walkway was this blue statue of a popular Chinese TV cartoon character. These were the only two pieces of art in this park.

Toasting the CCP or something

Here we are, toasting our good health with the local Chinese Communist Party school chief (in the middle, wearing the sweater) after a meal of breaded squid rings with tomato coulis, roast eel, peanut milk, and other cool stuff like that. Meals were served either "lazy susan" style at a large table of 8 or 10 or buffet style. The advantage of the buffet style was that it usually included tags to identify the nature of the dish. At least, I assume the labels were accurate, because most of the time I had no idea what I was eating. Happiness at mealtime is not knowing what you are eating. But at the lazy susan meals - where were the more formal meals - the wait staff brought plate after plate of stuff that bore no resemblance to anything I'd ever seen before and there were no labels. It was faith-based dining. On the last evening, even the China veterans in the group had there hunger blunted a bit when squid tenticles turned up in the first soup served - long, curly tenticles with all the accessories still attached. Fortunately, there was an Outback Steakhouse in the hotel, and many of the group gathered there afterward to have a burger and fries.

Students, writing

Here is a class of 8th graders practicing traditional Chinese letters. Just after I took this photo the student on the right came over to me and gave me a gift of the large ricepaper poster with Chinese letters that you can see her working on when I took the picture. She was very sweet. The Chinese students in general were spirited and friendly. One liked to break dance and put on a demonstration for us. The classrooms were unheated and very plain; you can see the white uniform windbreakers the kids are wearing in class. School building construction was primitive by our standards, with single-panel wood doors, plastic door windows, and exposed electrical wiring. I did not see any fire extinguishers in either of the schools I visited. Both schools were large; the one at which this picture was taken had 12,000 middle school students.

Dragon in the Mall

One day our group went to an ancient marketplace (a lot of places in China are ancient) and I came around the corner and came face to face with this friendly dragon. The photo does not do it justice - the artwork on the face was very impressive. This was not part of a parade - it was a permanent part of the marketplace. There were thousands of shoppers in this maze of narrow alleys, most of whom were youngish couples. The little shops sold everything imaginable, from jewelry to Communist Party literature - there were even copies of Mao's Little Red Book and Korean War-era posters picturing US planes being shot down. In general, the Mao period and its images are still very much in evidence. Mao's picture is on the currency, and his photo was all over the hotel where I stayed. (One such photo - of Mao meeting with some Russians - had a caption that read: "Chairman Mao Zedong meets with leaders of the Union of Soviet Socialite Republics." Ha! No wonder the USSR went bust, being led by a bunch of socialites.)

19 to green; 17 to red; 20 to green

Note the timers on the traffic signals. All the traffic lights had these large count-down timers to tell drivers how many seconds remained until the light changed.

This photo was taken at about noon on a "sunny" day according to Weather.com. It was not raining, just the usual smoggy air...it always looked like concrete dust and smelled like a combination of mildew and diesel exhaust.

Great Wall

This is the Great Wall, near Beijing. Our guide said that about 1/3 of the Chinese who worked on the wall died while doing so. Apparently as soon as they were capable of heavy work locals were drafted into the Wall building force and they worked on the Wall until they dropped. From a distance, you can see how the giant masonry fortification snaked across miles of severe mountain terrain. It was build as much for transportation (of troops) as for point defense. The Wall is about 25 feet high on its "enemy" side. There were several soldiers from the Red Army standing around, one of whom seemed to like my hat. The ones they were wearing looked just like mine, except they had a little red star on the front. Note the very clear, clean air. This is about 60 miles northwest of Beijing.

Low Visibility

That is me, in the Winter Park Crew jacket, looking at the ancient Chongquig City Hall. Weather.com said it was "sunny" but the smog was so thick that large buildings only a few blocks away (like the Chongquig City Hall, pictured here, about 300 yards in front of me) were visible only in outline. And buildings more than 1/2 mile away were invisible. Many people wore masks over their nose and mouth not to prevent the spread of flu but to try to filter out at least some of the stuff in the air. After more than an hour or so in this air, one gets a dull headache. I hear that respiratory diseases are much more common here.

In a country that makes many vivid impressions of all kinds, this one is the most vivid. It is like breathing through a damp musty wash cloth all the time.

These photos were taken on a clear day. The traffic shot was in evening rush hour.