China Sampler

Dim sum: a Chinese light meal or brunch, eaten sometime from morning-to-early afternoon with family or friends. Dim sum consists of a wide spectrum of choices, from sweet to salty. It has combinations of meat, vegetables, seafood, and fruit.

In the spirit of dim sum, I present a sampler of photos taken on my trip to China in April of 2006..

(Click on the photo to make it larger, it looks better that way)

Beijing: Tiananmen Square: hard to get good pictures because Beijing is very smoggy.

Beijing: Forbidden City: every year the portrait of Chairman Mao gets smaller; many buildings are being restored for the Olympics in 2008; the wire on the restored roof, below left, is lightening rod.

Beijing: Summer Palace: much of the gardens was closed due to renovations for the Olympics in 2008.

Beijing: Peking Opera: a far cry from the militaristic propaganda operas of Madam Mao.

Badaling, Beijing: Great Wall: our guide wrote our names phonetically in chinese on our nametags; I was quite startled when a vendor on the great wall started calling "Robert, Robert, over here!"

Beijing: Ming tombs:

Old Beijing: rickshaws: the streets of the historic part of Beijing are too narrow for cars, so we transferred to pedicabs.

Beijing: Silk Carpet factory

Xian: Tang Dynasty dinner and show

Xian: terra-cotta warriors: having seen some of these sculptures in 1974 when they toured the U.S. to raise funds for further excavation, it was wonderful to see them in their original site.

Chongqing: board the Viking River Sun: the ship was brand new; this was it's fifth cruise. It has a 306 passenger capacity; we had 180.

The meals were often western, sometimes eastern with menus supervised by Martin Yan. Here's a sample western dinner menu.

Fengdu: one of the towns which had to be rebuilt on higher ground due to the river rising due o the construction of the Three Gorges Dam.

Lesser Three Gorges: the area just above the Three Gorges Dam which will be most affected by the rising of the river; the bridge in the upper right photo will have to be rebuilt because the water will come within five feet of the roadbed.

Three Gorges Dam: due to weather we went through the dam at night, so I have taken photos from a disk purchased aboard ship to show what going through the locks was like; there was about three feet between the walls of the lock, the ship, and other ships; thank heavens for laser guidance. It was too smoggy to take photos downstream.

Jingzhou: Viking River Cruises School: the company has renovated the school renamed for it: the kids genuinely seemed to enjoy our visit and performing for us.

Jingzhou: we saw many traditional family farms; when we stopped for this photo opportunity, the farmer continued plowing until we were finished taking pictures and then stopped and waved as we got back on the bus.