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Rain falling on a pond in Pingyao
During the spring of 2013 my second semester at North China Electric Power University went well. I had a good teaching schedule: all my classes on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, 12 hours per week. Also, 4 of my 6 classes were English majors: students who, for the most part, were willing to speak out in class.
I tried out a new lesson in my classes that semester: I gave the students a Nasreddin folktale to read and discuss. I had them read the story, then a short article about Nasreddin and his tales, and finally I asked them, working in groups of three, to make up a dialog in which two of them have a dispute. The third person, acting as judge, listens to their arguments and then makes a wise, or humorous, judgment – like Nasreddin.
The students had fun with the exercise, and to my surprise, most of them were already familiar with Afanti – Effendi – the Turkish, Sufi folk hero that we in the west call Nasreddin. He is, I learned, very popular in Xinjiang amongst the Uighur people. One student told me that when she was a child she loved to go see puppet performances of “Afanti de Gushi” – “Stories of Effendi.”
The semester went by quickly. I was glad it was nearing an end, because in early June, with only two weeks left of class, I started experiencing stomach problems – low appetite, a bloated feeling after eating, and fatigue. I was planning to travel in China in June and July, then go to America in August, but I still didn’t have definite travel plans. And given the diagnosis I received from our school hospital – chronic gastritis – I decided to postpone traveling for a few weeks and see if I could recover first. I had no idea at that time that my diagnosis was probably wrong, and that my body was starting to show signs of a more serious problem. I also didn’t know that this would be my last summer in China, my last chance to travel.
At the time I prayed for health, even though I’m not religious, and I wrote in my journal:
6/6/13 I’m still here in China after more than four years. I often ask myself why. For one thing,
I still like teaching. I like my Chinese students. I fall in love with them, and it makes me happy
to help them.
China is my soil, I am a seed. I will sprout, grow, blossom, and flourish. I will be a strong,
healthy, happy, and optimistic plant. And I will give comfort and joy to those I touch. That’s
why I’m here in China, on this earth.
On June 16th my cousin Nathan came to China for his second business trip, and like the first, he found time to come from nearby Tianjin to Beijing and spend a few days with me. This time we went for a hike on the Great Wall at Mutianyu. After returning to Beijing we relaxed and had a meal at the Pass By Bar in the Nanluoguxiang hutong area. Inside the Pass By Bar, where they serve all kinds of imported beers, you can see a poster of Mao with a toothy, goofy grin. Above his head it says, “I’m Drunk!”, and below are the words: “Alcohol may be man’s worst enemy, but China Mao says love your enemy.”
Nathan in the Pass By Bar. Click to enlarge.
During the last two weeks of June I felt a little worse. I could barely eat, and I always felt very tired and weak. I took zhongyao – Chinese medicine, and changed to a blander, less spicy diet. By the beginning of July I was starting to feel better, I could eat more, and I felt my strength and energy returning.
I was scheduled to start a trip on July 16th. I would start by taking a train to Datong in Shanxi Province, then go to Pingyao a few days later. Hou Danjuan was a new professor at our university; we met on campus one day in the spring and became good friends. She helped me buy my Shanxi trip train tickets, and helped me reserve my hotel in Pingyao. In late July we planned to take a fast train to Qingdao together. Then on August 4th I would fly to the U.S. to see my family. Though I was looking forward to the three trips, I was also feeling nervous about my stomach, about my strength and energy level, and about finding food I could eat on the road.
~~~
The main reason people go to Datong, in northern Shanxi Province, is to see the amazing Yungang Shiku - the Yungang Caves. The 5th century caves, carved by Buddhist monks into the south side of Mt. Wuzhou, contain many ancient statues of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. Work began in 460, continued for 60 years, and in the end 252 caves and many statues were carved.
When you visit the place you begin by walking along a long promenade with columns, leading into the Yungang Caves. You can enter some of the caves and explore several feet back. And some of the caves now have wooden facades through which you enter. Inside some caves the sculpture – statues and friezes – shows the influence of Indian sculpture style, with multiple figures close together or entwined. The largest statues are of long-eared Buddhas with serene
countenances, usually with one hand raised and the other resting on a knee or pointing downward. I liked gazing at their calm faces and benevolent smiles and feeling myself relax.
The White Buddha Cave, Cave No. 20, constructed 460-470 A.D., is one of the earliest caves carved at Yungang. The outer part of the cave has fallen away, as well as the Buddha statue on the left. The Buddha in the middle is the largest at Yungang, at 13.7 meters. He has a high protuberance on his head, a broad forehead, a full and round face, long eyes, long ears, high nose, and he sits with his hands in the mudra position of meditation. Standing in front of the White Buddha, I noticed that no matter how many loud, picture-taking tourists there were, the Buddha always smiled down upon them. I lingered under his benevolent gaze.
When you visit the place you begin by walking along a long promenade with columns, leading into the Yungang Caves. You can enter some of the caves and explore several feet back. And some of the caves now have wooden facades through which you enter. Inside some caves the sculpture – statues and friezes – shows the influence of Indian sculpture style, with multiple figures close together or entwined. The largest statues are of long-eared Buddhas with serene
countenances, usually with one hand raised and the other resting on a knee or pointing downward. I liked gazing at their calm faces and benevolent smiles and feeling myself relax.
The White Buddha Cave, Cave No. 20, constructed 460-470 A.D., is one of the earliest caves carved at Yungang. The outer part of the cave has fallen away, as well as the Buddha statue on the left. The Buddha in the middle is the largest at Yungang, at 13.7 meters. He has a high protuberance on his head, a broad forehead, a full and round face, long eyes, long ears, high nose, and he sits with his hands in the mudra position of meditation. Standing in front of the White Buddha, I noticed that no matter how many loud, picture-taking tourists there were, the Buddha always smiled down upon them. I lingered under his benevolent gaze.
The White Buddha Cave
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Besides the Yungang Caves, one can visit the Huayan Monastery in Datong. Built during the Liao Dynasty (907-1125), this Buddhist monastery is the largest and best preserved Liao Dynasty monastery in existence in China. In China, one frequently sees imposing statues of lions in front of temples, modern government buildings, hotels and restaurants. At the Huayan Monastery it was the first time I saw small, life-like lion statues, each with a lion cub nearby.
Datong's Nine-dragon Wall is not far from the monastery, but is worth a visit only if you have some extra time to kill. Though it claims to be the largest Nine-dragon Wall, it's not been well maintained, and consequently not as impressive as Beijing's Beihai Park Nine-dragon Wall. Actually, the most interesting part of the place was a little garden off on one side of the courtyard, where I saw some bottle gourds growing on the vine. In shops I’d seen many painted bottle gourds and bottle gourds made into flutes – the hulusi – but I’d never seen pretty pale green ones hanging on the vine.
One day I took a bus out to Xuankong Si – the Hanging Monastery – a Buddhist monastery built into the side of cliff – the second most visited tourist spot near Datong. It’s an amazing site: wood and brick buildings with yellow-tiled roofs, clinging to the side of a gray cliff. Because there had been heavy rain recently, the authorities were concerned about falling rocks, so we weren’t allowed to go up into the monastery like you usually can. I think that was OK. Seeing those buildings and walkways held up by long wooden poles made me a little nervous. I was happy to just take pictures from a distance.
Xuankong Si - The Hanging Monastery
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In a small Taoist temple at Hengshan – Heng Mountain – which is not far from the Hanging Monastery, I took a picture of a scary-looking deity. He wore armor head to foot, and was draped in an orange silk robe. His face was orange, and he had bulging white eyes and grimacing
white teeth. In one hand he held a huge spiked club. On my website in the caption under the photo I wrote: “Pitchers hate this guy when he comes to bat.”
Climbing Heng Mountain, as is true of most visited mountains in China, means climbing stairs to the mountain top. Though it seems to take a bit of the adventure out of “mountain climbing,” it was still fun to pass by and rest at precariously perched pavilions, made of red-painted wood and yellow roof tiles, and eventually reach the peak, where a stone tablet tells you you’re at an elevation of 2016.1 meters. (6615 ft.)
The next day, back in Datong, I checked out the Datong Ancient City wall. There was a cannon and some nice towers, but there wasn’t much interesting to see. Unlike Dali, Lijiang, and Pingyao, the Datong ancient town had not been preserved inside the ancient walls. It was a little frustrating too, because I discovered, after having walked on the wall for a while, that in order to get off the wall I would have to walk all the way back to the place where’d I’d come up. As I walked, noticing ominous-looking dark clouds in the sky, I composed a song in my head, wrote it down back in my hotel room:
One Way Down
A Country Western Eastern Blues song
When I was up on Datong’s ancient city wall,
A storm blew up and grew into a squall,
I was far from where I’d come up, with lightning striking near,
Then I remembered there was only one way down.
There’s only one way down,
It’s the same way that you came up,
So if you’re up on Datong’s ancient city wall,
Remember there is only one way down.
I tried to find some shelter in one of the many towers,
But they were all locked up all locked down,
So I started prayin’, “God save me over to another day,
I don’t want to die on this here lonesome wall.”
God said:
“My son there’s only one way down,
It’s the same way that you came up,
There are many ways to Heaven, and many ways to Hell,
But on this old wall there’s only one way down.”
I finally got down off that wall and grabbed a taxi cab,
Told the driver of my harrowing ordeal,
He smiled a silly smile, lit up his cigarette,
Said, “Yep, there is only one way down.”
In Chinese he said:
There’s only one way down,
It’s the same way that you came up,
Tourists look high and low to find another way,
But in fact there’s only one way down,
There’s really only one way down,
In the end there’s only one way down,
(Both of us in harmony,)
Down, down, down, down… down.
~~~
In contrast, the ancient town preserved within the ancient city walls at Pingyao is a wonderful place to visit and linger. Pingyao, in Shanxi Province, is China’s best-preserved ancient walled town. It was already a thriving merchant town during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), but really became important during the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), when merchants established the Rishengchang, the first draft bank in China’s history. Nearly 4000 Ming and Qing dynasty houses remain within the city walls.
On my first day I walked through the City Tower, which spans a narrow street, and is the tallest building in Pingyao ancient town. I’d taken a morning train down from Datong, and I was ready for a late lunch. I found a restaurant with a menu that won the award for the best Chinglish of the trip. The menu included “Eat Ant,” “Cold Surface Wire,” “Meat Fried Rotten Son,” “Pimple Boil,” Fungus Long Yam,” and “Potatoes Balls.” (I’m not making any of that up.) Even though there were also pictures and I could see that the “Cold Surface Wire” was actually a bowl of noodles, I decided not to eat there.
After a meal I visited the Qingxu Guan – the Qingxu Temple – a Tang Dynasty (618-907) Taoist Temple, a quiet temple and museum combination that is worth a visit. Nearby was a narrow, dead-end alley. I thought at first I was seeing a modern art sculpture: a white porcelain Western toilet, a little green-leafed tree growing out of the toilet bowl, all against a background of gray brick. Of course, I took a picture.
The Rishengchang Draft Bank in Pingyao – also called the Rishengchang Financial House Museum – was a very interesting place. It was a successful dye shop in the late 18th century, transformed into a draft bank in 1823. The museum had over 100 rooms, including offices, living quarters, guest rooms, and a kitchen. One bank clerk’s office had an open wooden chest half full of fake silver ingots – called sycee or yuanbao – with their distinct saddle shape. And for the bankers’ convenience, next door to the bank was the Meiheju Baked Food Shop, like a Qing Dynasty Starbucks, except with tea rather than coffee.
Two things you can see all over China during the summer, and Pingyao, with its hot weather, had plenty of both: (1) barbecue - usually lamb, chicken, or beef, and (2) Chinese men with their shirts rolled up to display their fat bellies – perhaps a way to signify success – he has plenty to eat. I was speculating that it might be a kind of courtship display – like the way peacocks display and rattle their plumage to peahens. When I saw one fat-bellied Chinese man, looking over his shoulder unhappily at another fat-bellied Chinese man, I was wondering if he was about to challenge the other to a belly-bumping contest, as a way of determining dominance.
Pingyao is a wonderful place to just walk around and take pictures: the ruts in the stone at the entrance gates, a short, steep, arched stone bridge, a nook with a bas-relief sculpture of a horse and rider, cages for parading criminals through Pingyao at the Pingyao Prison, beautiful green and yellow roof tiles shaped like a dragons’ heads, rain falling on a pond in a secluded courtyard garden, a stone dragon’s head in a wall spouting rain water out of its mouth, a bronze statue of a qilin, a mythical beast with the body of an ox, the head of a dragon, huge antlers like those of a deer, a lion’s tail, and its body covered with large, flame-shaped fish scales.
On my first day I walked through the City Tower, which spans a narrow street, and is the tallest building in Pingyao ancient town. I’d taken a morning train down from Datong, and I was ready for a late lunch. I found a restaurant with a menu that won the award for the best Chinglish of the trip. The menu included “Eat Ant,” “Cold Surface Wire,” “Meat Fried Rotten Son,” “Pimple Boil,” Fungus Long Yam,” and “Potatoes Balls.” (I’m not making any of that up.) Even though there were also pictures and I could see that the “Cold Surface Wire” was actually a bowl of noodles, I decided not to eat there.
After a meal I visited the Qingxu Guan – the Qingxu Temple – a Tang Dynasty (618-907) Taoist Temple, a quiet temple and museum combination that is worth a visit. Nearby was a narrow, dead-end alley. I thought at first I was seeing a modern art sculpture: a white porcelain Western toilet, a little green-leafed tree growing out of the toilet bowl, all against a background of gray brick. Of course, I took a picture.
The Rishengchang Draft Bank in Pingyao – also called the Rishengchang Financial House Museum – was a very interesting place. It was a successful dye shop in the late 18th century, transformed into a draft bank in 1823. The museum had over 100 rooms, including offices, living quarters, guest rooms, and a kitchen. One bank clerk’s office had an open wooden chest half full of fake silver ingots – called sycee or yuanbao – with their distinct saddle shape. And for the bankers’ convenience, next door to the bank was the Meiheju Baked Food Shop, like a Qing Dynasty Starbucks, except with tea rather than coffee.
Two things you can see all over China during the summer, and Pingyao, with its hot weather, had plenty of both: (1) barbecue - usually lamb, chicken, or beef, and (2) Chinese men with their shirts rolled up to display their fat bellies – perhaps a way to signify success – he has plenty to eat. I was speculating that it might be a kind of courtship display – like the way peacocks display and rattle their plumage to peahens. When I saw one fat-bellied Chinese man, looking over his shoulder unhappily at another fat-bellied Chinese man, I was wondering if he was about to challenge the other to a belly-bumping contest, as a way of determining dominance.
Pingyao is a wonderful place to just walk around and take pictures: the ruts in the stone at the entrance gates, a short, steep, arched stone bridge, a nook with a bas-relief sculpture of a horse and rider, cages for parading criminals through Pingyao at the Pingyao Prison, beautiful green and yellow roof tiles shaped like a dragons’ heads, rain falling on a pond in a secluded courtyard garden, a stone dragon’s head in a wall spouting rain water out of its mouth, a bronze statue of a qilin, a mythical beast with the body of an ox, the head of a dragon, huge antlers like those of a deer, a lion’s tail, and its body covered with large, flame-shaped fish scales.
The Pingyao ancient city wall
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Pingyao ancient town, as seen from on top of the city wall
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At work in the Rishengchang Bank in the 19th century
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One day I took a bus to the Wangjia Dayuan – the Wang Family Compound – a Qing Dynasty residence of the extended Wang family, located south of Pingyao. Some guidebooks translate dayuan as courtyard, but that's misleading, because the place is a vast labyrinth of many courtyard residences. Dayuan can also be translated as “compound,” which is a better description of the place.
The courtyard residences were similar but unique. They all had cisterns, for collecting rain water in case of fire, but one courtyard also had sundial. Another had a circular relief sculpture of five bats swirling around the character meaning “wealth.” In China the bat is a symbol of good luck and happiness. This is because the word for bat (fú) is similar to the word for wealth (fù). Often, five bats are shown together to represent the Five Blessings: long life, riches, health, love of virtue, and a natural death.
I especially liked the names of each courtyard, shown on inscribed stone plaques on the walls: No-Gossiping Residence, Osmanthus Garden, Pleasant Breeze Culture Courtyard, Green Door Yard, Quiet Thinking Room, and, where I would want to live if I lived at the Wang Family Compound: Pine and Bamboo Yard.
In the afternoon our tour bus took us to the Zhangbi Castle and defense tunnels, built during the Sui Dynasty (581-618), located in Zhangbi Village, south of Pingyao. The map on the wall looked like one of those ant farms: an intricate network of narrow, low-ceilinged tunnels under the castle and the village. We toured the tunnels, and, unfortunately for me, they were built for people of much shorter stature. I walked bent over most of the time, banged my head more than once, and straightened up slowly and painfully when we finally emerged into the sunlight.
The village of Zhangbi was more interesting. I saw two and three-colored roof tiles, wood carvings of an elephant’s head (Buddhist) and a dragon’s head (Taoist) side by side on the outside of a wooden building, and a man herding his flock of bell-clanging sheep right through the village.
One of the many courtyard residences in the Wang Family Compound
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Beautiful three-color roof tiles on a building in Zhangbi Village
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Seeing these places – the Yungang caves in Datong, Pingyao ancient town, the Wang Family compound, and Zhangbi Village – made me wish I had a time machine and could visit places in time as well as space. I would use the name Wang, jump into my time machine, and move into my courtyard home. I could take some of my poetry with me and try to convince the Qing Dynasty Wangs that I was a descendant of the Tang Dynasty poet and painter, Wang Wei. At the very least, these places can make me forget about, briefly, modern China, the communist
government, and all the problems that development has brought to China.
~~~
On July 27th 2013 my friend Hou Danjuan and I took a high-speed train from Beijing to Qingdao. On our first evening there we took pictures from our hotel room windows of the German-built
buildings, including St. Michael's Cathedral, in the Shinan District, the oldest part of Qingdao, where we stayed.
The next morning we headed out to see St. Michael’s Cathedral close up. St. Michael's, also called simply Tianzhu jiaotang – the Catholic Church – was built by German missionaries in 1934. With its impressive twin towers, it’s the largest example of Romanesque Revival architecture in the province, resembling a German cathedral of the 12th century.
On a street nearby I saw a restaurant sign advertise some kind of barbecue, but I didn’t recognize the first character indicating the kind of meat. I asked Danjuan to translate the character and she told me that 驴 (lu) meant “donkey.”
We passed a young man on the street selling colorful seashells. I decided that his name was Song Shi, and I taught Danjuan a tongue twister:
Song Shi sells sea shells by the sea shore.
The shells Song Shi sells are surely seashells.
So if Song Shi sells shells on the seashore,
I'm sure Song Shi sells seashore shells.
In a souvenir shop we saw that we could buy some dried and puffed up puffer fishes and porcupine fishes. Or we could by a dead, gutted, preserved sea turtle. In the evening back at the hotel I went online and found that five out of the seven species of sea turtle are listed as endangered or critically endangered.
Zhanqiao – Zhan Bridge – is actually a pier built in 1893. It’s 400 meters long, and when you walk out on it you reach the Huilange Pavilion at the end. We didn’t get out to the pavilion or even walk any part of the pier, because it was closed for repairs. Nor could I even get a decent picture, as it was very hazy our second day in Qingdao.
We visited the Tian Hou Gong – Temple of the Queen of Heaven – built in 1467 during the Ming Dynasty. Within the temple complex there’s a temple called the Long Wang Dian – Temple of the Dragon King. In front of that temple was a very cool bronze statue of a sinewy dragon. Most of it was darkened with age, but many parts were bright because of the many times the dragon had been touched on its nose, horns, and tail by people standing next to it to have their picture taken. Or perhaps the polished spots meant it was being rubbed out of superstition – rubbing the back brings good back health, etc. (So why would people rub the dragon’s long tail?)
Behind the Qingdao Naval Museum was a nice collection of military planes that included various versions of the MiG jet fighter. There were also some retired naval ships that you could board. Danjuan and I explored the An-Shan, a Russian-made destroyer, built in 1936.
Later we walked along the beach at the Lu Xun Park, which stretches for nearly a kilometer along the Huiquan Bay. I’m not sure why Lu Xun is honored with a park in Qingdao, when there’s a more famous park in Shanghai. But it’s a pretty park with pine trees, gravel beaches (not many), red rocks (plenty), and water.
We eventually made our way to Badaguan – Eight Great Passes – an old area of town with plenty of surviving German and Japanese architecture. It was interesting to see neoclassical architecture, presumably German, with cornices, pilasters, and window pediments. We passed by a massive building called the Jiaozhou Governor’s Hall, the former headquarters of the German Administration, also known as Gouverneurspalast, or the Governor’s Palace, built between 1904 and 1906. We saw one classical mansion converted to a kindergarten for Chinese kids, and we saw another turned into a hotel. Danjuan pointed out several black Audis parked in front of the hotel – “Probably government officials,” she said. This was in the days before Xi Jinping’s crackdown on perks and corruption, so I was wondering how much they didn’t have to pay per night.
We started the next day by visiting the Qingdao Jidu Jiaotang – the Qingdao Protestant Church, built in 1910, a castle-style church located west of Xinhaoshan Park. A beautiful work of architecture, the facade combines light ochre walls (brick covered with corrugate mortar and paint), with huge gray rough-cut granite blocks, topped by a red tiled roof. The 39.10 meter tall bell tower, which includes a large white clock, and 18 meter high main hall, is an impressive sight.
buildings, including St. Michael's Cathedral, in the Shinan District, the oldest part of Qingdao, where we stayed.
The next morning we headed out to see St. Michael’s Cathedral close up. St. Michael's, also called simply Tianzhu jiaotang – the Catholic Church – was built by German missionaries in 1934. With its impressive twin towers, it’s the largest example of Romanesque Revival architecture in the province, resembling a German cathedral of the 12th century.
On a street nearby I saw a restaurant sign advertise some kind of barbecue, but I didn’t recognize the first character indicating the kind of meat. I asked Danjuan to translate the character and she told me that 驴 (lu) meant “donkey.”
We passed a young man on the street selling colorful seashells. I decided that his name was Song Shi, and I taught Danjuan a tongue twister:
Song Shi sells sea shells by the sea shore.
The shells Song Shi sells are surely seashells.
So if Song Shi sells shells on the seashore,
I'm sure Song Shi sells seashore shells.
In a souvenir shop we saw that we could buy some dried and puffed up puffer fishes and porcupine fishes. Or we could by a dead, gutted, preserved sea turtle. In the evening back at the hotel I went online and found that five out of the seven species of sea turtle are listed as endangered or critically endangered.
Zhanqiao – Zhan Bridge – is actually a pier built in 1893. It’s 400 meters long, and when you walk out on it you reach the Huilange Pavilion at the end. We didn’t get out to the pavilion or even walk any part of the pier, because it was closed for repairs. Nor could I even get a decent picture, as it was very hazy our second day in Qingdao.
We visited the Tian Hou Gong – Temple of the Queen of Heaven – built in 1467 during the Ming Dynasty. Within the temple complex there’s a temple called the Long Wang Dian – Temple of the Dragon King. In front of that temple was a very cool bronze statue of a sinewy dragon. Most of it was darkened with age, but many parts were bright because of the many times the dragon had been touched on its nose, horns, and tail by people standing next to it to have their picture taken. Or perhaps the polished spots meant it was being rubbed out of superstition – rubbing the back brings good back health, etc. (So why would people rub the dragon’s long tail?)
Behind the Qingdao Naval Museum was a nice collection of military planes that included various versions of the MiG jet fighter. There were also some retired naval ships that you could board. Danjuan and I explored the An-Shan, a Russian-made destroyer, built in 1936.
Later we walked along the beach at the Lu Xun Park, which stretches for nearly a kilometer along the Huiquan Bay. I’m not sure why Lu Xun is honored with a park in Qingdao, when there’s a more famous park in Shanghai. But it’s a pretty park with pine trees, gravel beaches (not many), red rocks (plenty), and water.
We eventually made our way to Badaguan – Eight Great Passes – an old area of town with plenty of surviving German and Japanese architecture. It was interesting to see neoclassical architecture, presumably German, with cornices, pilasters, and window pediments. We passed by a massive building called the Jiaozhou Governor’s Hall, the former headquarters of the German Administration, also known as Gouverneurspalast, or the Governor’s Palace, built between 1904 and 1906. We saw one classical mansion converted to a kindergarten for Chinese kids, and we saw another turned into a hotel. Danjuan pointed out several black Audis parked in front of the hotel – “Probably government officials,” she said. This was in the days before Xi Jinping’s crackdown on perks and corruption, so I was wondering how much they didn’t have to pay per night.
We started the next day by visiting the Qingdao Jidu Jiaotang – the Qingdao Protestant Church, built in 1910, a castle-style church located west of Xinhaoshan Park. A beautiful work of architecture, the facade combines light ochre walls (brick covered with corrugate mortar and paint), with huge gray rough-cut granite blocks, topped by a red tiled roof. The 39.10 meter tall bell tower, which includes a large white clock, and 18 meter high main hall, is an impressive sight.
The Qingdao Protestant Church, built in 1910
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Another must-see sight in Qingdao is the Qingdao Yingbingguan – the Qingdao Guest House, or the former German Governor’s Mansion, which resembles a classic German castle. Like the Protestant Church, the yellow exterior walls are decorated with rough granite. Built between 1905 and 1908, in the then popular Jugendstil or Art Nouveau style, the four-story mansion is a beautiful example of a European villa. Each of the thirty rooms, all with luxurious and elegant decoration, has a distinct style and a unique, tiled fireplace. German furniture, Chinese furniture from the Qing Dynasty, curios, works of calligraphy and paintings, are also kept in their original locations. The surrounding grounds are nice to stroll through, too. Inside the perimeter walls, which were built in 1957, is a vast courtyard full of fruit trees and ornamental plants.
The Qingdao Guest House, the former German Governor’s Mansion
(photo by Alexandra Nosach: http://www.qingdaonese.com/qingdao-photos-nosach-3/)
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(photo by Alexandra Nosach: http://www.qingdaonese.com/qingdao-photos-nosach-3/)
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The Qingdao German Prison Museum is an interesting and kind of creepy place to
visit. The cell doors are open but a chain keeps you from entering them. There
are manikins: German prison guards, prisoners – one of them was a writer with a
pen and sheets of paper, interviewing another prisoner so that he could then
write something about his experience in the prison.
The basement of the prison gets even more macabre. It was added to the building
after the Japanese took over the prison, and was used primarily for torturing
and killing Chinese prisoners. The English on the plaque on the wall in the
basement is not very good, but its meaning is clear:
“The inquisition room of the Japanese Qingdao Navy’s embarment area. The people who
were arrested by the prison, not only eating and living would be mistreated, but also needed
to be tortured. The Japanese built cucking stool, hot seat as well as soldering iron etc., as
many as ten torture instruments, in order to cruelly kill the anti-Japanese soldiers.”
The Japanese or the Nazi’s – it’s hard to say who were the most methodically cruel occupiers.
Needing some soothing balm for our minds, Danjuan and had lunch, including Qingdao pijiu – Tsingtao beer – and then went to the Qingdao Gallery and Art Museum, near Ocean University. Later we took a break from walking at the Coffee Space Café, where the courtyard wall was painted with a Dutch windmill.
The following day we took a long bus ride out of Qingdao City to a place called Laoshan – Lao Mountain. It was an overcast day, so distance photography was difficult. And though it was also very hot and humid, we still enjoyed hiking (paved paths and stone stairs) up the mountain, enjoying the mix of red rocks and pine trees. The heat and humidity was too much for us so we didn’t make it to the top. We stopped and marveled at a bunch of inscribed constellations on top of a wide, flat boulder. I took a picture of the Maosuxing – the Seven Sisters, the Pleiades.
On our last morning in Qingdao we found a place near our hotel that served a Western-style breakfast, including jianbing – pancakes – and wafubing – waffles. Danjuan was apparently a little thirsty that day; maybe she hadn’t drank enough water the day before while hiking on Laoshan. So in addition to her breakfast of a jiandanjuan – omelette – she also drank three tall glasses of orange juice. She told me as she was finishing off the third glass that I could rightly call her a dawang. The term literally mean “big king,” but it’s also used in street Chinese to mean
someone who has an expert skill in something. “Yes, you really are a dawang,” I told Danjuan as I took a picture of her, smiling behind three empty orange juice glasses. We then checked out of the hotel and boarded our train back to Beijing.
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If I had known I had a seriously illness and would be leaving China in three months, would I still have taken the trips I did that July? I’ll admit there were some places higher on my travel list: Tibet, Guizhou, Sichuan’s Jiuzhaigou Valley, Hunan’s Shennongjia Forest, Xinjiang, etc. But I made the right choice, traveling alone to Datong and Pingyao, and with Danjuan to Qingdao. For one thing, those places were all fairly easy train rides from Beijing. Secondly, Danjuan had never been to Qingdao either, so it was fun exploring it with her, and it was nice to have a friend with me, given that I wasn’t feeling full strength during the time.
It was also nice to visit places steeped in history and spirituality: the serene Buddhas at the Yungang Caves and the Hanging Monastery, the peaceful courtyard residences at the Wang Family Compound, and the Catholic Church and Protestant Church in Qingdao. It felt almost as if I was, without planning to do so, going on a spiritual pilgrimage. Perhaps, in some way I was not aware of, I needed to visit those places. Maybe there’s some truth in what Blaise Pascal said: “The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of…”
It was also nice to visit places steeped in history and spirituality: the serene Buddhas at the Yungang Caves and the Hanging Monastery, the peaceful courtyard residences at the Wang Family Compound, and the Catholic Church and Protestant Church in Qingdao. It felt almost as if I was, without planning to do so, going on a spiritual pilgrimage. Perhaps, in some way I was not aware of, I needed to visit those places. Maybe there’s some truth in what Blaise Pascal said: “The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of…”
Enjoying a high-speed train ride from Beijing to Qingdao
click to enlarge
click to enlarge