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All posts for the month May, 2015

Seoul

Posted by Jim St. George on May 14, 2015

Posted in: South Korea, UNESCO World Heritage Site. Leave a Comment

Cheonggyecheon in downtown Seoul, a great place to run in the morning and stroll in the evening

Now it’s off to Korea, our 35th country since we left the U.S. two years ago and the first completely new country for both of us since Liechtenstein 10 months ago. This has been high on our list of “must see” countries for years, but as recently as a month ago we still weren’t going to fit it in while we were over on this side of the world. Then the earthquake in Nepal blew up our plans, so here we are.

What to say about Seoul, our first stop in Korea? I’ll admit, it was somewhat disappointing. The city has been a huge economic success over the last few decades and has grown at exponential rates; today it has over 10 million residents. It’s a city increasingly known for technology companies like Samsung and as a center of modern design. I was expecting a lot, and maybe that was the problem.

The three buildings that make up Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, with the statue Tall Tree and the Eye in the foreground and the Grand Hyatt hotel looming in back

To be sure, there were some great parts to the city. My favorite was Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art which was, for me, just about a perfect museum. It consists of three buildings, each designed by a different “star-chitect” (a word I just learned from Mark). The museum itself is a work of art, each building separate yet harmoniously integrated. One consists of traditional Korean art, another a mixture of Korean and international modern art, while the third building is the Child Education & Culture Center that houses special exhibits.

Besides the beauty of the two components we toured, what we loved was both the scale of the exhibits and the useful and interesting information provided. We’re just too familiar with museums that show 5,000 shards of old pots that I’m sure are important but, if you’re not an expert, they’re just not that interesting. At Leeum, the permanent collection consisted of a much smaller number of brilliant pieces. As a result I learned more about what was there (I’ll admit, I’d never heard of “celadon“, but I loved it) and how or why it was unique.

A perfect museum.

One of the beautiful displays of celadon in the museum. Don’t tell them about this photo; you weren’t supposed to take pictures.

There were two great walking/running/hiking areas that I loved. One is Cheonggyecheon, a beautiful stream running right through the city center just a couple blocks from our hotel.

As you worked your way downstream Cheonggyecheon became more natural and beautiful

The stream had been covered up for decades by an elevated highway, but a $400 million urban renewal project tore the highway down and opened up the area (shades of the Big Dig!) in 2005. Apparently the water that now flows through the landscaped urban oasis is pumped in at great expense from elsewhere, generating plenty of concern among environmentalists, and there was lots of controversy about removing the people and small businesses that had congregated along the stream/highway over the years. Still, without knowing the merits of the various issues, it’s a great place to run in the morning or promenade in the evening.

This was a real meatpacking district, not some namby-pamby tourist destination.

Amusingly, we walked down it a few miles on our first full day in Seoul, enjoying the gentle beauty. When we figured we’d gone far enough we just randomly turned inland toward the city, in the general direction of our hotel, and found ourselves in the meatpacking district. We felt like we may have been the first tourists ever to amble through the smelly, bloody mess.

The other adventure highlight in Seoul was Namsan (South Mountain) Park, an 860-foot peak just south of the city center. I hiked up to peak and walked around the area, but my inspiration was the Happy Legs running group I saw out for a run. Not just any running group, they were a mixed group of blind and sighted runners. The visually impaired runners were typically tethered to sighted runners who led them gently over the undulating hills in the park. I love my morning runs, but watching runners help someone who is blind run on a hilly trail was pretty impressive.

The Happy Legs running club, with blind runners tethered to and guided by those who could see.

A view of Changdeokgung, a 16th century palace that today is a UNESCO World Heritage Site

Seoul has some great historic temples and palaces, as you would expect in a city that has been a capital for centuries, so we went to see some of those. And we’re starting to get used to Korean cuisine and all the great little dishes that are associated with any meal. Still, I left the city somewhat underwhelmed. Somehow the city never came together for me, though maybe it’s expecting a lot to understand a city of 10 million on a five-day stop. I never saw the great design elements in the architecture (except for the Leeum museum) I was hoping for, instead seeing a lot of soul-less 1950s and 1960s buildings.

The good news is that we expect to spend a few more days in Seoul at the end of our time in Korea, in part because we ran out of time to tour the DMZ on the border with North Korea. Speaking of which, we were here when news came out that the ruler of North Korea, Kim Jung-un, had the country’s Defense Minister executed – killed in front of hundreds by anti-aircraft fire – for showing disrespect by falling asleep in a meeting he attended with Kim. This guy is a freak. A dangerous and honestly scary freak.

We’re traveling in Korea for a couple weeks with our friend Bill Armstrong, a Minnesotan who is also a Navy veteran. Despite those similarities, I don’t know him from Minnesota or the Navy; we met several years ago on vacation in Chile and have stayed in touch over the years. He’s traveling for a year, so we met up in Korea before he heads to Japan and New Guinea.

There were lots of great shots of Changdeokgung

The buildings are colorful and elaborate

Seoul is the home of K-Pop music and everyone wants to be a star, including these boys posing at one of the ancient palaces

As I neared the peak of Namsan Park, a fellow hiker took my picture

A view of Seoul from the top of Namsan Park

This statue was just outside one of the exits from Changdeokgung Palace. I assume they’re playing a game, but it looks less innocent to at least some people

One final shot from Changdeokgung Palace

One of our first Korean meals as we were still getting used to the large number of fascinating side dishes that come with every meal.

Finally, this isn’t a great shot, but it’s a great story. We were staying on the Executive Club floor in Seoul, where they have happy hour every night with free drinks and light food. As the bar was closing one night these people sitting next to us went and got two extra glasses of wine (to go with the glasses they already had) plus extra beer and juice and sodas. Happy Hour ended for the rest of us at 8:00 PM but they must have had enough to last another hour or two. Well done, neighbors!

Reflections on China

Posted by Jim St. George on May 11, 2015

Posted in: China. Leave a Comment

All day, from early morning well into the evening, people are out enjoying the Greenway in Hefei

We spent seven weeks in China, the longest stretch in any country since we started traveling two years. Actually, the longest stretch in one country outside the U.S. for Mark since he studied in the Soviet Union in 1988 and since I was stationed in Naples in 1975! Still, we just scratched the surface covering 13 places. Nothing out west, where we thought we were heading (before the earthquake and problems with Mark’s knee), nothing up north where it’s still too cold for us wimps, no village or rural stops, and only one small-ish city. What did we cover? Hong Kong (twice), Macau, Shanghai (again, twice), Hangzhou, Hainan, Chengdu, Langzhong, Chongqing, a ~~three~~ two gorge Yangtze Cruise, Wuhan, Hefei, Nanjing, and Xian.

What did we learn?

There was amazing transportation infrastructure. The highways are smooth and uncrowded, the trains are fast and punctual, the train stations are sleek and shiny, and the subways are clean, easy to use, and they go everywhere. The downside of travel in China is the pedestrian experience. Simply put, crosswalks have no meaning whatsoever. There was no sense that if I was in a crosswalk drivers would yield. Even in cases where I had a green light and the cars had a red light, they assumed – and took – the right of way. I saw cars blow past frail elderly people, young mothers with strollers, you name it. In China – or at least the part of it we saw – pedestrians must fend for themselves.

In Hangzhou I thought the beautiful parks were unusual. I came to learn they’re the norm.

There were spectacular urban parks and green spaces. This was really the huge surprise for me. Except for Macau, we found beautiful parks and greenery everywhere. An army – and not a small army – of sweepers kept the spaces free of not only litter but stray leaves and anything else. The gardens were colorful and beautiful and just made you want to be outside walking around. By all accounts China has huge pollution problems, but on this swing through China we didn’t really experience it like I have in, say, Mexico City or Beijing. All the parkland made for great running with no bad air side effects.

In this one Wuhan development, we counted at least nine buildings go up, each at least 40 stories, probably more. And that was just one development.

There is a lot of construction. It’s on a massive scale, bridges & high rise buildings dwarf anything imaginable in the U.S. Just one example, Starbucks is everywhere and opening three new sites every day. Still, why do the malls seem strikingly empty? And what happens when the music stops? What happens if they’ve overbuilt and all of a sudden there are no more construction jobs? Or is that a question that has little meaning in a country with 1.4 billion people?

Smoking. Ugh. Apparently the Chinese haven’t gotten the memo that smoking – and second-hand smoke – is dangerous. You get the sense that tobacco companies don’t really worry about losing a little bit of market in the U.S. if hundreds of millions of Chinese are buying their products.

It’s noisy here. Car honking. Loud voices, particularly those shouting into cell phones. We had one taxi driver we thought must have been furious with us he was yelling so loudly. Hacking, coughing, spitting. Kids running around. Tour guides either shouting or using amplification to be heard over other tour guides, also shouting and being amplified. Shop owners putting cheap speakers outside their shops and blaring music, sales pitches, or whatever. Even in the beautiful parks, people – especially older people – would walk around with their radios blaring whatever they wanted to listen to.

It’s still more isolated than any other huge economy. A big part of China’s long history has been about keeping others out; that’s what the 19th century Opium Wars were about. To a surprising degree, the west is still on the outside looking in. Try to find Western liquor in anything but the most westernized cities like Shanghai. For us, we decided to buy something local. We had no idea what it was, but we thought “How bad can it be?” Asking that is a rookie mistake; it tasted like licking a horse. Seriously awful. In many cities people turn and stare, sometimes point. They want their picture taken with you. Mark’s self-taught Chinese was extremely helpful at times.

A spectacular pork dish in a restaurant on the eighth floor of a mall in Chongqing, where all good Chinese restaurants are

The food is often great, usually challenging. Have I become a Chinese food snob? I came to love good Chinese food with flavors and textures you would never get in the U.S. And ingredients we just never see – chicken heads & beef penis, for instance (true). We usually ordered more than we wanted just in case some of it was inedible and occasionally that was extremely helpful. The highlight was Sichuan, and particularly the Sichuan peppers that left a tingle in your mouth unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.

What did we miss? Given stereotypes of the Chinese back in the States, who knew you couldn’t find laundry services there? We never found a single place to do our laundry except for the criminally expensive hotel services that we refuse to use? And for that matter, you’d be surprised at how challenging it was in some places to order tea. In China? True.

The big success in China though? We walked into a store and bought Apple Watches the first day they were available. Before Americans were out of bed yet!

Xi’an: Terra Cotta Warriors and So Much More

Posted by Jim St. George on May 8, 2015

Posted in: Asia, China, UNESCO World Heritage Site. 1 comment

Just a few of the warriors guarding Emperor Qin Shi Huang’s third century BC tomb

Here’s what we thought. We have to go to Xi’an. The discovery of the terra cotta warriors there in 1974 is one of the great archeological discoveries of our time. It’s one of the places you just have to see if you’re in China. So we’ll go to Xi’an, be fascinated by the terra cotta warriors and then just hang around.

Here’s what happened. We went to Xi’an, saw the terra cotta warriors and thought, “OK, yup, we’ve seen ’em.” Then we saw the rest of Xi’an and absolutely loved it. So, yes, go to Xian. And see the warriors. But save time to see the city, too.

In Pit 2 they display a few of the warriors in glass cases so you can see them close up

First off, then, just what are these terra cotta warriors? They are part of the necropolis built for Emperor Qin Shi Huang, China’s first emperor, around . (“Qin” is actually pronounced “Chin,” from which derived the name “China.) Discovered by peasant farmers digging for water in 1974, the three pits that have been partially excavated are believed to contain an army of up to 8,000 life-size terra cotta statues including military personnel of various ranks, horses, chariots, and even the musicians and acrobats that would have traveled with the troops (what Joe Biden would excitedly call “literally an army of 8,000!). The troops are all facing east, where Emperor Qin’s fiercest enemies came from. Part of what makes them amazing is that each of the soldiers is identifiably different from the others, sort of like snow flakes. It is believed that ultimately some 700,000 workers were engaged in the project before the Emperor died in about 210 BC.

So what’s not to like about the site? Nothing, really. It’s just that for us, at least, seeing it was somewhat anticlimactic. I’d heard about these warriors and seen pictures and read about them and all that years before we ever got here. And seeing them didn’t add that much to my experience. The commute out to the site, about 90 minutes east of Xi’an itself on a local bus, was a pain. There was a video available that was so annoying in its lack of useful information that we left after maybe 10 minutes. The second of three pits displaying warriors is supposed to have hundreds of warriors, but all we saw was a vast expanse of un-excavated land. And at the pit sites themselves there was a surprising lack of any but the most basic information. Interesting and cool, yes, and incredibly important from historic and archeological perspectives. But for me, just not that vital.

Lots of warriors in Pit 1

In some ways more interesting was the Tomb of Emperor Jingdi. This site is pretty close to the Xi’an airport, itself an hour’s drive from the city, so we hired a driver to take us there en route to the airport for our flight to Seoul as we were bidding adieu to China. Emperor Jingdi followed Qin by a few decades, but was a very different emperor. While Qin was a military man, evidenced by the thousands of warriors who stood over his grave for two thousand years, Jingdi was Taoist-influenced emperor who was far more focused on improving the lives of his subjects: lowering taxes, emphasizing diplomacy over military intervention, and so on.

Remains from the Tomb of Jingdi, a display we very much enjoyed

The differences are evident in their mausoleums. While Qin’s is all about the military, Jingdi’s emphasizes daily life, things like household items, servant, and domesticated animals. We also found the Jingdi tomb more accessible in a couple of ways. First, there is only a small fraction of the number of tourists compared to the army of terra cotta warriors site; we practically had the place to ourselves. Second, the layout is interesting, in that for much of the site you are walking on glass looking down at the excavations; you have a much better view of what they’re finding and the scale of things and so on.

In other words, this was the unexpected archeological gem of Xi’an.

One of innumerable food stalls in the Muslim quarter of Xi’an

More food

But then, there was the city itself, which captivated us. A city of about 5.6 million people and the capital of Shaanxi Province in northwest China, it was one of China’s historic capitals and a terminus of the Silk Road. Because of that Silk Road traffic, Xi’an was the first Chinese city to be introduced to Islam and to this day has a notable Muslim population. That made for a fabulous street scene one day as we searched for the Great Mosque, founded in 742. You’d think that finding something called the Great Mosque would be easy, but you’d be wrong. Unlike the vast majority of mosques, this one is entirely Chinese in architecture with neither domes nor minarets. Instead, it consists of four quiet courtyards that provide a welcome respite from the bustle outside its walls.

The other big attraction in Xi’an is the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda, a shrine built in the 7th century to preserve the Buddhist sutras and other artifacts brought back from Master Xuanzang’s epic journey on the Silk Road to the West (India, though I have trouble thinking of India as the West…). His Travels in the Western Region is a classic of Chinese literature and to this day the source of movies and television shows.

The Giant Wild Goose Pagoda, just a stone’s throw from our hotel

Add to all that the normal Chinese experience of beautiful parklands and great walking and running areas and you end up with a great city to spend time in. We even found some great Chinese food for our last dinner before heading to Korea. We went to Xi’an primarily to see the terra cotta warriors and discovered a city worthy of an extended visit in its own right.

Kite flying has been a big deal as we’ve traveled across China, and it’s not just for kids. You see many older guys like this with pretty sophisticated equipment out with the kites soaring.

The street scene in the Muslim Quarter. It’s often surprising just how many enormous crowds you can see in China.

I love this. Some years ago Paris experimented with short-term bicycle rentals, and they were a huge success. Now it’s spread all over the world with lots of Chinese cities offering the same option of grabbing a bike somewhere and dropping it off somewhere else for a modest fee.

The Chinese seem to love cute signs at urinals. Here is their variation on Neil Armstrong’s famous words.

There were probably more statues in Xi’an’s parks than I’ve ever seen in any city

Here are students learning. The plaque next to them says “The teacher teaches children. ‘You will get melons if you plant melons. And you will get beans if you sow beans.'” Makes sense.

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