Masterpieces of Chinese Painting at the V&A

It was a late decision to go and see Masterpieces of Chinese Painting and I got there with just a couple of days to spare, and had to finish work promptly on a Friday afternoon to do so. It was the constant stream of positive comments on Twitter that forced my hand.

The exhibition had all the usual V&A hallmarks of interesting items laid out in carefully each with enough annotation to inform but not too much to bore.

The exhibition was sold out for almost all of its run. And it showed. It was busy all the way round and I had to queue for some of the displays. This was not helped by there being several long scrolls on show that could only sensibly be viewed right-to-left which meant that we all had to flow in the same direction and had to stick close to the display to see all of it.

The paintings were much as I expected (and hoped) with lots of exotic costumes, magical landscapes and dragons. The subjects of the paintings were as much interest as the techniques and materials used to produce them.

Also as usual at the V&A the rules said no photographs and as usual I kept to them but a few people did not. So these pictures have all been borrowed from the V&A site. That limited my choice somewhat but I did find a few that I both liked a lot and which, I feel, give an honest feel for what the exhibition was like.

Here I have fallen for the crisp white storks performing the aerobatics against a bold blue sky while a typical building just about manages to peak above the clouds.

I found these dragons irresistible.It is a detail from a long scroll called Nine Dragons(you can guess why).

Like most of the painting in the exhibition is was seriously old. In this case it dated from1244 and there were paintings there much older than that.

The red stamp is a personal mark of a creator, owner, curator or somebody else with an official interest in the painting. On a picture this size there were thirty or forty of them, all carefully placed so as not to disturb the picture.

My final choice is the most typical. This green/blue style was very popular in several periods.

The composition was also very typical with the picture dominated by the landscape of hills and water and with the action confined to small figures.

The combination of the quantity and quality of the exhibits and the busyness meant that it took me two and a half hours to get around, and that was taking the last small room at some speed. By my own highly scientific measure of an exhibition, anything approaching two hours means that there was plenty to see so this was most definitely a very good exhibition.

Mu's Residence, Li Jiang is magical

It has taken me three months to get around to writing about our last full day in China.

Some of the reason for that was because I had to write about the other twenty days first but the main reason was the difficulty I have had in trying to select just a few photos to capture the mood of the day.

But let's start at the beginning.

Li Jiang had already shown itself to be the prettiest place we visited during our three week tour and so I relished the prospect of a free morning to explore the town on the final day before starting the long journey home via Kunming and Hong Kong.

Our guide suggested that we spend the morning shopping but I had other ideas.

I had bought a map of the town on my arrival and that revealed that in the heart of the old town was a palace, called Mu's Residence. Exploring that was always going to be more fun that looking for cheap fake goods to give people for Christmas.

The streets of Li Jiang would put most mazes to shame and, like a maze, they all look the same too and so, even with a map, finding the palace was bit of a challenge.

On the plus side it was Li Jiang that we were bemused in and so we had pretty buildings and murmuring waterways to engage us as we set about our exploration.

When we got there we were immediately staggered by the scale and the beauty of what we found.

Mu's Residence was based on the Forbidden City and while it is much smaller it is also in a better condition, for example there was an abundance of water and plenty of plants to provide respite from the heat and the sun.

The buildings were magnificent and most are open so you can climb up to the higher floors to get different perspectives on the palace that was like a maze within a maze with its many sections and numerous walkways. Exploring was a real joy.

The large pond was my favourite part of the palace with its collection of rectangular sections that lead you further away from the buildings and deeper in to the garden and the shade.

All of that would have made for an absolutely fantastic morning, but there was more.

At the far side of the palace was a sign to the garden which took you through a building, along a walkway above the streets of Li Jiang and then down through another building.

The garden was small when compared to the palace but was very pretty none the less.

Beyond the garden was another path, this time leading up the tallest hill in Li Jiang. The climb was steep and hard work but was made easier by the frequent seats and the traditional covered walkway that kept the aggressive sun at bay.

The cafe half-way up also helped.

As we climbed the hill we could see increasingly more of the old town and then of the new town beyond it.

The roofs of the old town are wonderfully uniform in shape and colour, almost as if somebody had just scattered some building bricks from a Chinese Lego set (and if there is no such thing as Chinese Lego then there jolly well ought to be).

A proud pagoda sits on the top of the hill looking like an adventurous wedding cake. More climbing here but this time it was inside and with easy steps.

More views and more to marvel at on a day which had already far exceeded any reasonable marvelling quota.

I hope that the images I have chosen here have given you some confidence that this really is one of the loveliest places in the world. The cultural atheists can find more proof and the devotees can find more joy in the full set of photos.

This was the last day of the holiday and it was also the best day. If I could go back to China for just one day then I'd go to Li Jiang and Mu's Residence.

Li Jiang is stupidly pretty

Li Jiang was the last stop on the tour of China and it was also the prettiest place that we went to by a long long way. Water flows everywhere through the old town bringing beauty, calm and welcome respite from the heat. Footpaths follow the water as it meanders confusingly producing a maze that you want to get lost in.




This picture is a fairly typical street scene showing how the low traditional buildings crowd around the water while bridges try to keep away from it and red lanterns hang curiously at the side.

The waterways run down the middle of some streets, at the side of others and in a few they are almost hidden in half-open channels.

This street has gone for the at-the-side option with stumpy bridges to gain access to the shops and restaurants and with trees along the footpath to provide shade. The constant red lamps are here too.

Any possible complaints of uniformity are firmly dispelled by the way that the familiar themes are tortured into different shapes as the streets follow the myriad waterways through the town so that each step gives different perspectives and different pleasures.

The town fights some of the confusion by planting very welcome maps (made of wood) at the major junctions - and there are lots of junctions.

These maps only show the neighbouring paths and so tease at an escape from the town itself, but who would want to escape from this?

The buildings that follow you through the town are all low and traditional in design providing comfort and charm. This is a tourist area and so almost all of the buildings are either shops or restaurants and they are usually open wide to the walkways. It's rather like walking through a large shopping centre except in a good way.

The streams are also home to large colourful tribes of carp that swim in geosynchronously while feeding from the fresh passing water.

Complementing the walkways are a few open spaces where decoration is allowed to flourish and, in this case, the clear glacial water can rest before resuming its long journey towards Shanghai.

Here still but alert lions guard the town against the possibility of dragons emerging from the deceptively safe looking water.

These few pictures and my inadequate words can only begin to hint at just how pretty Li Jiang is. Perhaps seeing more of my photographs here, on Facebook may help, but I think that I can best impress you with the wonder of Li Jiang by saying, truthfully, that if I could only revisit one of the places we went to in China it would have to be Li Jiang.

That all but wraps up my holiday in China, there is only one day left to cover and that was the best day of the lot.

Spruce Meadow

As the three week's tour of China drew to a close we had one final excursion to an area of natural beauty and it was the one that I liked the most.

On the slopes of the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, not far from Li Jiang, there are a few meadows where you can follow wooden walkways to explore the flora and fauna.

But first you have to get to the mountain and then up to the meadows.

There is a large coach park at the bottom of the mountain where you decamp from one coach to another as only these official coaches are allowed in the park.

The final section of the journey to the meadow is by cable car. As everywhere else in China, the cable car station is in the middle of a shop to provide another Intensive Retail Experience (as our tour group called them) but we had the good fortune to be there late in the day when the shopkeepers had departed leaving us to walk along eerily deserted isles.


This good fortune extended when we got to the meadow itself as there was only one other tour group there with us and they were leaving as we were arriving.

The walk of almost an hour was peaceful, refreshing and awe inspiring as it circumvented the meadow.

The path is made of well worn wood, laid there to keep you on the prescribed path and so protect the meadow which had many delicate flowers among the grass.

The path weaves its way in a combination of twists, turns, dips and rises so that the next step is always something of a mystery.

For most of the route the path had the meadow on one side and the spruce forest on the other offering constantly changing and constantly inspiring views.


For most of the way around the meadow the delightfully awkward spruce trees conspired to hide Jade Dragon Snow Mountain but the rules of geometry are rules and so as we crossed to the other side of the meadow the snow-capped mountain came imperiously in to view.

But the mountain may be disappointed to hear that while it was clearly grand and important it was also distant and the meadow was more compelling as the walkway continued to take us on our wondrous journey.

All too soon the hour the tour guide allowed us for free exploration (something we got too little of on the tour overall) and we made the best of the scenery and fresh air as we trudged reluctantly back to the cable car that was waiting to take us back down the mountain.


The mountain range had a final treat for us before the coach came to take us away thanks to the glacial waters flowing from it.

These waters and the unusual geology combined to make a series of curved terraced waterfalls.

Earlier in the day yaks tolerated tourists on their backs as they shambled in the water but they too had gone home so we were spared the temptation to be uncultured tourists.

Having negotiated the waterfalls the river pauses for breath in a small lake that more geology has turned a deep clear blue in a Photoshop sort of way.

All good things must come to an end and the blue pool marked the end of our day in the mountains. All that left of our holiday was the town of Li Jiang itself. And little did we know just how good that was going to be.

Tiger Leaping Gorge

The last stop on the tour of China was Li Jiang in the South West of China, close to the border with Myanmar. But despite the long distances we had travelled we found ourselves once again by the Yangtze River.



Here the river is slow and placid as it flows through the deep Tiger Leaping Gorge, which gets its name from a legend of tiger jumping across to escape from a hunter.


A walkway has been built for tourists (mostly Chinese as they were everywhere we went) along the one side of the gorge.

The path has been hewn unceremoniously out of the rock and has regular signs warning you of falling rocks, though quite what you were meant to do if there was an avalanche was less clear.

At times the rocky headlands proved too much for the path builders and we took detours through the cliffs.

At other times parts of the path had been abandoned for safety reasons and new tunnels had been built through the cliffs to take us along a safer route.

And sometimes the path had to be cut so far into the cliff that the rock completely covered us.

The walk along the path from the coach park was about 1km and offered many impressive views of the gorge and the river. It was a wonderful walk and we thought that was the reason we were there.


Then we came across the rapids.

At this point the path was some height above the river and we looked down on a scene of wonder, violence and noise.

We could also look in admiration and some concern at the people on the viewing platform on the other bank.

But as we got closer we could see that there was a viewing platform on our side too and that was were we were headed.

The platform was probably somewhat closer to the river than would be allowed in this country (don't you just love our Health & Safety rules?) and that allowed us to get right up next to the thundering water.

In fact we were often in it as the waves frequently crashed over the platform. What fun!




As days out go, this was pretty much on the button; a good walk with great views ending with a soaking that children of all ages would revel in.

Amazing Stone Forest in Kunming

From Guilin we flew to Kunming, one of the largest cities in China (and that is saying something) and a growing regional hub. Apparently it has more cars per person than Beijing, which is probably why they are building so many roads there.

But we were not in Kunming to see the city, we were there for a natural attraction, the Stone Forest.




The spectacular stone formations are karsts, like we saw on the Li river cruise, but these are smaller and sharper.

The paths between them were narrow and twisted and so you were always surrounded by rock. This was not the place to be if you suffer from claustrophobia!

Sharing the feeling of entrapment were a few pools of water that had fallen into a rocky tomb from whence there is no escape.

The grey rock dominated the scene but a few trees found enough purchase to grow a defiant canopy of green.


At the centre of the forest was a view point on top of one of the karsts and we had one of the familiar steep climbs to get up to it.

Unfortunately the Stone Forest was very busy and everybody wanted to climb to the vantage point. As a result it was rather like trying to get onto a busy tube during rush hour, and remember that the Chinese have no concept of queueing.

The struggle to get to the top (and the harder struggle to get down again) were worth the time and effort as you could see the full extent of the forest and also how sharp the rocks were at their peaks. Falling off is not recommended.

The Stone Forest was a good excursion from Kunming that seemed to offer tourists little itself.

Guilin is a very pretty city

The reason for going to Guilin for a couple of days was to see the natural wonders but the city itself proved to be quite an attraction too.


The spectacular limestone karsts that we saw on the Li river cruise intrude on the city two and we were taken up one.

This was a less grand climb than most of the others we were taken on during the tour as the geography dictated that the walk had to be narrow and steep but it was still rewarding.

It was also challenging because it was over 30c with bright sunshine.

Other rewards came at the top where the narrow display platform included an ice cream vendor which we took swift advantage of before enjoying the view.

The water, trees and low-rise buildings that we could see were a stark contrast to most of the other cities that we looked down on and they hinted at the beauty that we would see at street level.

Taking an alternative route down we came across a small bird enclosure that had been allowed to fall into some neglect but provided some interest through its small collection of colourful exotic birds that had an area around the size of two tennis courts to wander through.


Guilin is very hot in Summer so the locals tend to come out and play in the evenings.

Recognising this, the local authorities have built a nice place for them to play in.

These pagodas, and the surrounding park, are new but clearly very traditional in design.

The lighting was sumptuous yet subtle and was joined by a few other lit buildings that combined to make the down-town area very attractive.

It was also very busy with many people enjoying the lights, the water, the restaurants and walking along the side of the river.


In daylight, the walkway along the river could be appreciated for its decoration and design.

These steps lead down to the river from the road outside our hotel where they form a small circle that has no purpose other than to be attractive.

Similarly the fish shaped seats added a touch of welcome humour as well as decoration.

Our time was limited but it was just enough to do a circular tour of around 2km crossing the river twice on the two nearest bridges.

This short walk and the shorter one in the lights the night before were enough for Guilin to make quite an impression on me and I would love to have the opportunity to go back there.

Natural wonders in Guilin

After the day in Chong Qing we flew to Guilin where the pace and nature of the holiday changed dramatically. We left the big industrial cities behind and spent the rest of the holiday in small picturesque towns and in fantastic countryside.

First it was another short cruise, this time along the Li where we meandered slowly past stunning limestone karsts that towered over us like a giant's teeth.

Also along the way we also saw plenty of wildlife, there were water buffalo grazing at the water's edge and cormorants (more on them later) sunning themselves on pontoons.

Interest was also provided by the enterprising but apparently desperate people who rowed out to the passing boats to try and sell their wares to tourists through the windows of the cruise boats.

It was also interesting to see the other cruise boats going past as they all had their busy kitchens at the back open to the elements. The guide warned us that seeing another boat's kitchen would put you off eating from our boat, and he was right. The locals were less concerned about the hygiene standards and the kitchen did a roaring trade.


The boat took us some way from Guilin and we took a coach back. Here the local tour guide (we had a different guide for every city) did us a favour and we stopped off along the way to have a close look at some typical Chinese agricultural land.

We walked past several small rice fields that were at different stages, from freshly planted to ready to harvest.

The water also brought small boats and bridges to add to the natural beauty.

It was all very peaceful and all very lovely and was a welcome change from the big bustling noisy cities that we had spent the first week of the holiday in.


The next day we were taken to another natural wonder, the Reed Flute Cave.

Here the water has eroded the soft rock to make stalactites, stalagmites and other spectacular formations.

Many of these had names that were meant to reflect their shape but you often had to stretch your imagination more than a little to see the resemblance.

The system of caves is around 1km long and was illuminated colourfully throughout to highlight the detail of the rock formations very effectively. More use of light was made in the large cave in the centre of the system where we were treated to a short son et lumiere.

Somehow using the unnatural light and sound to enhance the beauty of the natural rock worked well and the trip was a success.

Cormorant fishing is famous so we just had to take the optional trip to witness it.

Of course it was nothing like the real fishing that is done with cormorants to get fish, this was just a brief display for tourists, but it was still special.

It was night, the river was dark, the little boats were dark and the cormorants were darker too so it was quite hard to see anything and even harder to photograph it but I hope that this picture gives a reasonable impression of what we witnessed that night.

With natural beauties like those that we saw in our two days in Guilin it is no wonder that this is a popular place for tourists and it was here that China started to feel like the China we see in the west.

A day in Chong Qing

A belated return to the story of my Summer holiday picks up at the end of the cruise along the Yangtze with a day in Chong Qing. The main reason for going there was to see some pandas. In the original schedule we were due to go to a panda sanctuary but this got changed at some point and we ended up going to Chong Qing zoo instead. At least it had several pandas, like this one!



We were given the best part of an hour to explore the rest of the zoo and this proved to be a mixed blessing. The animals were good but the layout of the zoo was very complicated and we were sent out to explore without maps. Not surprisingly, a few groups were late back. With more time and a map this could have been a good morning but, instead, it was bit of a time filler between the pandas and lunch.


As with most cities we visited, we were marched up a hill. This time the reward at the top was a lesson on Chinese tea and the ceremony that surrounds it.

We were given a few teas to try which we drank out of small cups, while the importance of the cup, the pot and the temperature of the water were explained to us.

We were also shown the correct way to drink the tea; look, smell, taste and then drink with your left hand behind your back (men). They did a pretty convincing job and brought some of their tea home.

The view from the top of the hill was less of a reward as the haze that dogged us all the way along the Yangtze still hugged the river. We were at least able to get a good idea of the size and modernity of the city.

The climb up was more interesting.

Here we had more of the familiar gardens, pagodas, water and bridges. This rope bridge, like almost all the bridges we walked over in China, stubbornly refuses to take the shortest route across the water and is all the more pretty for doing so.

One of the pagodas we passed belonged to Chiang Kai-Shek when the capital city of China was moved to Chong Quin in the 1930's during the war against Japan.

Incidentally, most of the cities that we visited seem to have been the capital city of China at some point. It has moved many times either at the whim of an Emperor or because a capital had fallen to an invading force.

After the hill came the fight to the next town, Guillin, and our short stay in Chong Qing was over. The pandas made it all worthwhile.

Fengdu, the ghost city

Our final shore trip on the Yangtze cruise was to Fengdu, the ghost city, so called because legend has it that all dead people go there. As with most other trips on this holiday, there was a lot of climbing involved with many spectacular things to see on the way.



Also becoming familiar were the traditional style buildings and the luscious and well-kept gardens. The buildings include an assortment of temples, usually with Buddhist icons and statues.

But there are daemons too!

Not only is this guy pretty fierce looking but if you look carefully you can see that he is chewing on a hand.

Figures like this adorn the route up the hill to remind you to be good in this life.

There are also a few tests to perform to prove your goodness, luckily none of these were too challenging.

First we had to cross a short but steep bridge in an specific number of steps and couples had to do this hand-in-hand. And before entering the temple at the top of the hill we each had to balance on a metal ball for a few seconds.

We all passed and entered the temple with relief.

On the way back down we were given some clue has to what might have befallen us if we had failed the tests!

A grizzly and imaginative montage depicted various scenes of torture that not even Frank Miller would put into one of his lurid (but excellent) Sin City comics.

I selected a picture of a man being sawn in half but the other images were just as bad. A deterrent indeed.

After that it was the walk back down the hill, past the ubiquitous shops for tourists and back to the boat for our final night of cruising. The next day we would wake up in ChongQing.

Cruising the Shennong Stream

Our second shore trip was to another river! The Shennong Stream in Badong County is famous for its small boats and the way that they travel, but first we had to get there.

We left our large river cruiser for a smaller one and headed up one of the many tributaries of the Yangtze.

The reason for the smaller boat was soon apparent as the gorge narrowed and the hills crept closer to us as if determined to refuse us further passage.

The smaller slower boat and the quieter waters gave amble opportunity to savour the passing geology and the angled rock formations betrayed the results of India's relentless move Northwards, the same movement that created the Himalayas.


An hour or so later and the gorge finally defeated the ferry and we all had to decamp into "pea pod" boats.

These boats were manoeuvred up the increasingly narrower gorge by a crew of six locals who used to ply the river for trade but now do it for tourists.

There was friendly rivalry between the crews and much jolly banter was exchanged when a boat overtook ours despite their significant difference in age.

The paddles used look a little like oars but they are not used in the same way. Instead they are kept in the water and swished from side to side like a fish's tale.


Eventually the gorge becomes too shallow for even the sampans to be rowed and our valiant crew had to get out and pull.

This is the traditional way of moving the boats past the shallow stretches though things have changed a little, the crew who used to go naked to keep their clothes dry now keep their shorts on to stop the tourists' blushes.

And we were tourists so this was just a short pull to show us a little of what things used to be like before we retraced our steps back to the small ferry and then to the Yangtze where the large ferry was waiting to take us to our next destination.

The Three Gorges Dam

We started our four day cruise up the Yangtze river just downstream of the Three Gorges Dam, the biggest in the world, and our trip ashore on the first day was to the dam.

We were not allowed on the dam itself but were able to skirt around the edges and to go to the visitors' centre.

What we could see of the dam was majestic, particularly if, like me, you like big industrial things. And the cloud added a touch of mystery.

This is the upstream side and, to give you some ides of the scale, there is around 50m from the water level to the top of the dam. If your eyesight is fantastic you can just about see two coaches crossing the dam just to the right of the first red crane.


The Yangtze is a major traffic route carrying lots of people and freight and so lots of big ships have to get past the dam every day.

Here you can see part of the two chains of locks (one heading upstream and one downstream) that run along one side of the dam.

There are five identical locks in each direction and each one takes around 40 minutes to go through.

The locks work well but some commercial traffic is prepared to pay more to save time and now they are adding a lift that will take one ship at a time all the way from the bottom to the top of the dam (and vice versa). Sometime I think the Chinese build stupidly big things like that just to prove that they can!


Passing through the five locks was quite an experience.

This is the view that greets you when the lock doors open. Come into my parlour said the spider to the fly.

Again the scale is deceptive. We were on a large river cruise ship four stories high and the lock easily held six ships like ours.

This is the view from the top deck of our ship and you can see that the walls of the lock tower above.

The side walls have vertical scratches and streak that must be as nothing to the damage that they inflicted on the ships in turn.

There is also a lot of eerie screeching caused by the moorings, housed in channels, moving up with the ships.

All this combined to give us over three hours encased in concrete with dark water rushing past us while steel wailed in protest. Wonderful!

Yangtze cruise

A cruise up the Yangtze was more or less in the middle of our three weeks in China and provided a welcome respite from the hectic schedule onshore.

We had trips on each of the three days but I will cover those separately, this blog is just about the cruise.

We flew from Xi'an to Wuhan and then took a long coach ride to Yichang where we caught the boat that was to be our home for the next three days and four nights as we cruised up the river to Chongqin.

This first picture sums up the cruising as we spent most of the time cruising past cloudy hills, including the Three Gorges themselves.

The three days were broadly the same; breakfast on the boat, trip on shore to see something interesting, back to the boat for lunch then the rest of the day relaxing as the boat cruised along to our next destination.


We shared the river with many other boats, including a lot of commercial vehicles taking advantage of the easiest route into central China.

This ferry crammed full of lorries was typical of our fellow travellers.

We also saw several boats carrying coal and managed to catch the loading operation in action at one point.

The coal is brought near to the edge of the river by lorry and is held there in large storage bays. When the boats arrive they are filled using long hoses.

This creates a lot of coal dust around the boats and the inaccurate filling technique also pour some of the coal into the water leaving a black streak on the surface of the water as if some particularly nasty snail had just slithered over it.


For most of the journey all we could see on the shore were hills too steep to support anything more than a few huts in one place. One exception to this relentless greenery was the bridges.

And there were lots of bridges of all shapes and sizes.

I chose this picture because I like the shape made by the cables but I loved many of the other bridges too and I ran outside to one of the observation decks whenever we passed under one.

Each bridge warranted at least three photos (before, under and after) so I now have lots of photos of Chinese bridges, which is a good thing.


As we got towards the end of the cruise the steep hills gave way to more gentle slopes and these allowed bigger towns to creep towards the river's edge. They were all nameless and all looked much the same.

Despite being some days from the Three Gorges the impact of the dam is still obvious and the towns were well above the Summer water level in preparation for the higher waters to come.

These higher waters had marooned some very large boats on the side of the hills to create graveyards of rust that would slip naturally into a J G Ballard novel.

Some of the towns, like this one, had counterbalancing railways down to the river's edge.

The cruise provided many interesting sights over the three days but these were often some hours apart and were usually shrouded in haze so we often resorted to the standard holiday pastimes of playing cards and finding excuses not to write postcards. But the rest was welcome and the trips ashore were good and so, overall the Yangtze cruise was a good section of the holiday.

Xi'an

Xi'an was the third city on the tour of China. We arrived early on the Monday morning by train from Beijing and stayed there for three days and two nights.

The purpose for including Xi'an on the tour was the history in the area and we saw quite a lot of that, and we managed to see some of the local culture too.

For an ancient city, Xi'an has not that much of its history to show but the bits that are still there are well worth seeing.

First stop was the Small Wild Goose Pagoda, chosen in preference to the Large Wild Goose Pagoda because it attracts fewer tourists.

The pagoda looks old and frail but it is solid enough to climb up, which I did. The final stage on to the roof is probably illegal under European Health and Safety legislation but offers grand views over Xi'an.


Xi'an is a walled city and that wall is stupendous.

It is rectangular, not that far off square, and is around 13km in circumference. The four sides are long and unrelentingly straight. There are a few towers along the way but they are a long way apart and are momentary distractions as you walk past them.

We were give a measly 40 minutes to explore one section of the wall but as this was to be followed by a couple of hours rest back in the hotel I decided to walk along the wall instead.

It was another hot day, over 30c with no cloud, and the walk was a rewarding mix of freedom and endurance.

After the wall came the walk back to the hotel which I was delighted to accomplish without the aid of the map which I had left in the hotel!


The reason that Xi'an is on the tour is because of the Terracotta Army that was discovered in 1974 buried just outside of the city.

The scale of the site is just amazing. The dots you can see on the far side are people.

This is the largest of the three pits which contain something like 8,000 terracotta warriors together with their horses and chariots.

The soldiers are life-sized and while very similar they do vary in their uniform and facial details. It is said that no two are the same.

The individual soldiers have a certain strength and nobility but collected together as an army they are majestic.


The biggest surprise in Xi'an was to learn that one of the few old buildings within the city walls is a mosque originally dating from the seventh century.

There is little at the site to show that it is a mosque, it is certainly nothing like the mosques that I have visited in Europe and Africa. There are no minarets, for example, and the architecture is pure Chinese.

What was more familiar were the courtyards, the water and the pervading sense of peace and tranquillity.

Most of Xi'an was disappointingly modern and just like the rest of China but there are some historical gems there that make it worth spending a couple of days there.

Forbidden City, Beijing

The Forbidden City is in the heart of Beijing and is a central part of any tour to the city. It is such a special place that it warrants its own write up here.

The approach to the City is via Tianenmen Square, which is well worth a visit itself. Unfortunately part of the reason for this is the events that happened there twenty years ago.

The Forbidden City, like much of the landmarks in China, dates from the Ming Dynasty and was constructed in the early fifteenth century. It's old.

It was a home to the Chinese emperors for about five hundred years until the end of the empire in the early twentieth century. It's old and has a long history.

The first thing that strikes you is the sheer size of it all. The first buildings that you see from the entrance are around 100 yards away and this is just the first set of buildings. The site is rectangular and measures some 750m by 950m.


The City is built on several levels with wide open spaces between the various buildings. The way up to, and down from, these levels is via wide stone staircases.

These staircases are in levels and at each level there is a wide walkway that leads off to each side. This adds some complexity to the site and provides interesting vantage points from which to enjoy the buildings and spaces.

The stairs and walkways are decorated uniformly and successfully in that they look grand but are not oppressive and do not detract from the buildings that they surround.

Which brings me on to the buildings, of which there are a lot. I've seen several different estimates for the number of rooms in the City so it is hard to be precise but there are around 9,000!

Though the buildings vary in size they all have the same familiar design common to most historical buildings in China. They are made of wood with highly decorated roof timbers. They have a sense of space while the decoration prevents the repetition from being boring.


The roofs are exquisite.

Again the style is familiar but this is the Forbidden City so it is grander and more impressive. They are coloured gold and have wonderful carvings.

I could have selected any number of photos but this one edged it because the close-up shows how the roof is put together and how each part is decorated.

As with the Summer Palace, the long corridors provided a welcome relief from the Summer sun. The design of the site seems simple but it is very effective for the climate and the needs of an emperor.

Again, this is a place that I could have spent a lot more time than we were allowed and would be on my must visit again list if I ever get back to Beijing.

And with more to see at the Summer Palace, Great Wall and Forbidden City there is a real case for going back before too long.