April 9, 10, 2015, Thursday, Friday, en route to Shanghai, China

April 9, Thursday- a sea day.  Last night was rough.  They had barf bags at the elevators on every floor and tucked into the hand railings.  Stray cabinets were tied shut.  I took a precautionary dramamine and we had no problem.  In the morning it was okay, but cool.  We all stayed indoors and did the shipboard activities.  I played bridge with John again in the Championship game for this segment of the cruise and we came in first, EW!  The evening entertainment was a Russian woman violinist with a beautiful sexy dress and smile.  You weren't necessarily paying attention to her virtuoso playing, which wasn't bad really.

April 10, Friday.  We spent the morning enjoying the sail up the Yangtze  river to our dock in Shanghai.  It was another long journey past docking areas, shipping docks, housing, skyscrapers and buildings all along the way.  Many many ships, barges, tankers, in the shipping lanes.  

About 10:00am we started to see the skyline of Shanghai, and then there was another skyline, and then the building with the square hole in it that they call the bottle opener.  Then a tall spire, a curvy building, a building flanked by two huge glass globes of the world and a building that looked like a cut rectangular daimond.  This was out the port side of the ship, our side.  The other side was the dock, but it had  a group of glass buildings that looked like a dragon tail, and the head was a huge saucer shaped glass building that was a restaurant.  

We can see the Bund area of town ahead of the ship, withing walking distance.  If our ship had been bigger, we would have had to dock over an hour away from town.  Here we have the best view anywhere.

new Shanghai skyline.  In 3 years this will be much different.

Busy streets, freeways one on top of another, but with flower boxes

Wee the high rises in the distance, boulevards, TV screen billboards

One of many huge shopping malls

Our Xian, Terra Cotta Warriors excursion left at 1:00pm.  I was the last to arrive in the Oceania Lounge. They gave me my passport, but told me that we should not show it to anyone, just the paper copy  we had of our passport with a red stamp we got on April 7, the first day we were in China.  We arrived at the airport which was the domestic airport, the newest airport, and the closest, an hour after we left the pier.  Shanghai rush hour traffic is 24 hours.  The gate agent wanted to see our passports!  Everyone of the 11 of us said we did not have our passports with us, just the copies.  The guide was beside herself.  She called her company, she called the airlines, and she finally called the ship.  She handed the phone to me and Marina was on the line.  She said that we should show our passports to the ticket agent after all.  The guide had a huge eyes when we suddenly held out our passports at once.  I guess the problem is we don't want anyone to stamp our passports as if we were leaving the country because then we can't get off again in China.  The guide was finally smiling.  I'm not sure what she thought of us.  We all did a really good job of lying and hope to have another Liars club contest for entertainment on the next segment because we would all win hands down.

Next, We get our tickets for the flight, gate 32, and head out to the gate, via the security.  We are all scared when they ask for our passports and boarding passes at security, but no one stamped them, just the boarding pass.  We get to gate 32, passing the usual designer hand bag shops and candy stores.  The flight is delayed 2 hours.  Then we get word it has been changed to another gate.  Luckily we are all looking out for each other and get to the right place on time.  I stopped and got a Subway sandwich since we are on our own for dinner and who knows when that will be.  Richard and MJ, Dan and Dianne, Tom and Deanna, Maryann and ?, Sue and Gerry and I are on the trip.

We finally got to our Xian Hilton hotel room at about 10:00pm.  I had to take a picture of the room.  I never saw such a big bed!  Bathroom amenities included a comb, toothbrush kit, shaving kit as well as the regular shampoo, conditioner, body wash, lotion, and soaps.

April 11, 2015, Saturday

After breakfast we are off to the city gate and walls.   These were used to fortify the city in ancient times, with a moat and everything.  The government is making the inside central city in the style of Chinese architecture and demolishing the other, in order to make it a tourist destination.

city gate pagoda and guide

Wild goose pagoda

Next we visited the wild goose pagoda.  Buddha or one of his followers came 50,000km from India with relics and written teachings to Xian and the government built this temple to house the relics.  But in the cultural revolution many tnings were destroyed.  

The trees were in blooms  with pink flowers.  There were big peonies in one area.  One room housed a beautiful diorama in jade of this Buddha's life, ending with a reclining Buddha.

Jade relief of reclining Buddha

Purple jade happy Buddha at the jade factory

Next we visited a jade factory.  They explained the difference in jadite and common mountain jade.  jade with more colors is more valuable.  they had his beautiful lavender jade. It was a government store..  No one bought anthing.  Downstairs they had furniture and clothing and silk.  I saw a chest just like the one I bought at a garage sale in Anchorage that had the jade decoration, for $5,500.00.  

I paid $2,000 and it was already in Anchorage.  Andy has it now, I hope he keeps it.

More spring flowers

Driving to the terra cotta soldier museum and Xian:  solar water heaters on top of apartments.  Empty skyscraper apartments, greenbelts on the side of the roads, garage door store fronts but nice wares and sidewalks.  Last night we saw some street food vendors.  Yang said these are illegal.  One child policy:  this changed because there are now not enough workers, and if a one child marries a one child, they may have two children.  But children are very expensive.  Government housing usually has 800 sq ft, whereas the old style homes with multiple families had only 200 sq ft.  The government will buy up this old housing for $50,000 US each person to  build the skyscrapers.  Much of the old charm of China is being lost.  China today is becoming 40 story skyscrapers in groups holding about 20,000 people, large factories, infrastructure challenges with traffic gridlock in spite of the high cost of a vehicle.  Only maybe 35% of the population owns a car, but in a town of 9.5 million living such in density, it makes for traffic jams. Everywhere it seems there are construction fences.  In our tall tourist bus we can see the remains of the old style housing behind the fences.  Deanna pointed out the national Chinese bird is now the crane.

  This development has all been since the mid 1970's, and the buildings that make the skyline of Shanghai, just in the last 25 years.