Spring Break in the Heart of China

Sichuan is one of the two most beautiful provinces in China along with Yunnan according to traveler’s books. Indeed it has an incredible natural diversity and magnificent thousand year old cities and relics. So Simon and I decided to pay the central province a little visit during the spring break.

We arrived in Chengdu, the capital, on the 13^th at noon. From there on we embarked into 80 hours of train and bus rides. We took a bus right away towards Leshan and Emeishan. In 1996, Mount Emeshan Scenic Area, including Leshan Giant Buddha Scenic Area in Leshan was declared World Heritage Site by UNESCO. It is the tallest stone Buddha Statue in the world with impressive 71 meters height finished in the end of the 8th century A.D.

On the next morning we went to Mount Emei which is one of the 4 sacred Buddhist mountains of China, shared between Taoism and Chinese Buddhism. The first Buddhist temple in China was built here in Sichuan Province in the 1st century A.D. The particularity of the site is the possibility to see Buddha in the clouds.

When you stand over the clouds on the highest peak a light effect that comes thought the clouds forms a Halo that has prompted many to jump of the cliff to join eternity. Luckily most stopped their pilgrimage a couple of centimeters before the fatal jump.

Some monks on the way to the monastery. I had fun playing badmington with the security guards inside but I have no picture of it.

Once this area was done, Simon had a great idea. At least it seamed great enough until I grasped the totality of it.

We jumped on a bus to get to Kanding, the first step to the Tibetan plateaus. In fact, Sichuan province was part of the Tibetan territories before the communist party decided otherwise while drawing the new boundaries in 1949. After 10 hours on the bus we stepped into the thick snow at 3000 meters altitude. The first thought was to figure out when the first bus back was. The city was nicely positioned at the base of a couple of very high mountains offering very pleasant views. The only attraction, which was a famous lake was too expensive for our shallow student pockets.

Back to Chengdu, we revised our plans. We were about to experience a train ride in China. After 17 hours and over a 1000km we got to Xian, the starting point of the famous Silk Road.

Meanwhile the chess score got to 12: 11 for Simon :-( I will nail him on the next one. The city was amazing to the point of saying that it is one of the few Chinese cities that actually has a charm and a pleasant character. The most beautiful part was the Muslim quarters of the city. They were the most picturesque and warm part of the city. Exactly like you would expect it in any place in the Maghreb, the streets were lively with lighted faces and good food. The nice smell in the air opened our appetites to what will prove to be the best food we will have enjoyed in the past 2 weeks.

This mosque was built in the hearth of china over 1250 years ago!!!! Not long after Mohamet made his journey in 622!

Our last stop was the city of Juzhaigou in the north of Sichuan inhabited only by Tibetans and Qiang people.

The region is known for its many multi-level waterfalls and colorful lakes , and was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site as well. We bought a 2 day entrance ticket and walked a total of over 40km in two days.

Since we weren’t planning to come down to the city overnight we found ourselves sleeping in the house of a very hospitable Tibetan couple. The house was full of rats running around but, in the end, the smile of our hosts to our weird ways and our good humor was worth all of it.

The pictures will tell you all the rest.

Everywhere the water was Blue, green, fuscia, violet and clearer than air

Five tips of the Beijing Star

Well after 7 months in China I finally got to the capital, the one and only 20 million large village on the planet. Here is the dream team:

Clock wise: Paulo (the Italian in red), Travis (Texas on the go), Simon (increasingly French), David (official photographer for the trip)...and Me

Beijing has seriously nothing particularly interesting, meaning that the spirit of the city is inexistant. I have a propensity to think that there was something more to this city, but decades of straight stalinist architechture and cultural wipe-outs have erased it. Nevertheless, the history and culture permeates in the faces of the people, even this kid next to the bike.

We went there with a guided tour unfortunately, it was only cantonese families and the whole tour was commented in...cantonese. Well, it might be considered a fun experience, just don't ask Simon about it.
















The land of what will be the world's longest standing communist state starts at the central point of the city. Mao dominates every citizen and tourist at the entrance of the forbidden city. His portrait looks straight to Tianamen square, where about 3 million people can gather up at once and 3000 can be killed in no time.

We stand with Simon in front of the statues symbolizing the people's revolution and their fight for freedom that led to the infamous founding of the Chinese communist state in 1949.




















We also visited the summer palace. It is a nice and serene place where people seem to take time to pleasure their sense. There are singers across the parks, the sound of various instruments crosses the air across the roads. I apologize, since the huge pagoda was under renovation , the picture is not really worth it.

The Great Wall of China

Yes, you do have to go. Yes it is the single most impressive human construction I have ever encoutered. It streches beautifully across chinese mountains, deserts and magnificence.

David: C'est bon laaa, les Bulgares vous voyez toujours trop grand vrai?
Boyan: Mais serieux David, je te jure que ce truc fait 6700 km!!!

At the most intensive point in the construction, the wall used to grow 6km a day with the help of 300 000 soldiers and 500 000 forced laborers. Those that died during it's construction are burried in its foundations and contribute to the collossal symbolism that this wall embodies.

Finally, we had great hotels all the way and our group was actually quite fun. The food though... was completely tasteless. If it did have a taste, you would have prefered it not to.
Amidst many other things, we discovered an underground city that can house ALL OF BEIJING'S RESIDENTS in case of a bomb attack. We went to a national, award winnig, tea house and tasted the most flavoured tea's on the planet.

Cheers, to nicotine clearing, alcohol removing, award winning, expensive chinese tea!

The tourists and the local kids

This January I went to Thailand with my girlfriend. I fell in love with that country and I have plenty of stories about it that fascinating. One experience stands out since it visits my dreams very often in the past week.

We went to the North of the country in the city of Chiang Mai. We were there to experience a two day adventure in the Asian jungle. One memorable event occurred at the starting point of our trek. It was in a small village of Chinese descent in the mountains close to Burma. While we were having a meal in the center of the village and buying water for the trip, many kids surrounded us. They were curious to see bright clothes, earrings and white skin.

We started playing with all of them,
escpecially Simone (the one towards which everybody is going!!!)

Everybody was compelled to play and giggle together. Some of us were lifting their fragile bodies into the air and using our hands as poles on which we made the kids spin as in a carrousel.

I'm not even sure if I was having more fun or the kid right there?

The nice red and green bracelet is on my right hand

We were accompanied by a very nice girl named Simone, she was Australian. You could see she loved kids and that her heart was melting at the sight of these pure children of the earth. Poor and dirty, the kids were approaching her more than the rest of us since she kneeled on the brownish road to be able to look straight into their eyes. She was an overweight person bearing her condition with great fortitude. The kids touched her hair and laid their hands on her stomach. She was not shy or repulsive to the kids, she just smiled and let them satisfy their curiosity. She played with them as many others did and enjoyed the moment human warmth. The lower picture is from later on in the trekking. He is the child of the family that took us into their home to sleep overnight

Many kids got to us and tied a hand made bracelet to our wrists. It was a trick to oblige you to give them some money for their work since it was impossible to untie the little multicolored work of art. You couldn’t blame them for the gesture. Simone generously gave for one bracelet to a young girl holding a two year old in her hands. To her surprise, the meter tall girl proposed to sell her brother seeing that Simone had money and was enjoying to play with him. The naked truth shocked us all but no one could do more than place this remark into context. It was common practice in some places; some people get it even worst in this part of the world.

I rememeber this kid was abusing of my tired arms...he he, just joking. Each child weighted less than my arm by itself. The little girl was not ready to accept I would ever put her down. So I lifted her again and again and again :-)

This grand moment was deep and revealed us a whole world in only seconds of human touch. I will remember these smiles and will always recall Simone. She understood that there is no shame to be different and that we are all linked by the fact that we live on the same planet. I will probably see this moment differently at various moments of my life, but I will always use it as a good lesson and will think of it as a chaste moment.

Business adventure in Gangxi

Check it out at http://simanovmanufacturing.blogspot.com/

Macau SAR!!!

Simon and I went to Macau this Saturday. We woke up at 8h00 and were in the public transport an hour later. The final trip was made on a catamaran boat that takes the roughly 70km distance between Hong Kong and Macau in 1 hour. We got on the island (it is actually not an island anymore since major reclamation have made it a peninsula) around noon.

Macau is the oldest European colony in China and dates back to 1557!!! It was administered by Portugal until it was ceded back to China in 1999, two years after Hong Kong. It is a very dynamic region with steady growth and high GDP.

Upon arrival we quickly met Pramod Agrawal, a Indian working in London for a textile company named Entyce. Even though Simon thaught he was a plain vanilla fake watch dealer from downtown Tsim Sha Tsui, but his “all good jobs are only landed by French Napoleonists” prevailed. He was on a business trip in HK but had a day off. We found a tourist service for 600HK$ (about 100CAD) that takes us to all the sites in Macau for 3 hours. Macau is pretty small and the trip proved to be more than enough. We got an English speaking local which drove us all around the place in a 1995 Mercedes!!!

Simon at the portuguese fortress

First thing you notice throughout the streets of Macau is the striking similarity it has to the Mediterranean cities. The buildings are painted, red, green, blue, and yellow. Flowers are hanged on the side of the streets. It is simply less tense and warmer place than Hong Kong overall. Even the people have a laid back axpression on their face, Europe does something good to people!!!!

downtown square

First stop was a temple. All temples in China look alike. A big fat smiling Buddha in the middle of the room and a lot of incense sticks burning. The smoke from the incense is meant to go up to heaven and transmit wishes to the dead. It is a common thing to build paper belongings and everyday use object out of paper and burn them in the temples so as to give the dead what they need to have a comfortable life up there.

The best thing we probably saw was the almighty Saint-Paul cathedral: the official Macau landmark. It was completed in 1602 and was the largest Christian church in Asia at the time. Unfortunately it was destroyed by a typhoon in 1835 so only the façade is standing today.
The wedding date will be announced soon, I'm trying to introduce the harem in China. Macau proved to be pretty liberal on the concept and offered me a wife as a sign of gratitude!

From there on we saw many things, which are worth mentioning only if it is the first time you get out of your country of origin. The tour ended downtown, where our fine senses led us to a great Portuguese restaurant. We had ourselves nice marinated meat. By the way, Macanese use the potaca to pay for their purchases, but the currency is pegged to the HK$ so both circulate freely in the territory.

The whole day wrapped up in the “Lisboa” casino, now the second biggest in Macau. The average revenue of a Macanese casino is 5 billion dollars, which is higher than Las Vegas since last year. Four new casinos were under construction at the moment of the visit. We contributed to the region economy by rapidly losing 600HKD!!! It was absolutely worth it.

This tower was built in 1999. It is a copy of a tower in New-Zealand but 10 metres higher, 338 metres overall. It was built by Macau's richest casino owner to fill out the view from his hilltop villa. That's how I would like to see things some day as well!