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Monday 20 August 2007

Among gardens and canals in the Venice of the East

To escape from the stickiness and the madness of the Shanghai subway, the excursion to Suzhou turns out to be a particularly interesting destination. Buses leave from Shanghai at regular intervals and the journey lasts about 1h30.
The discovery of the different gardens and alleyways must be done on foot. We begin with the northernmost garden which has a beautiful wooden pagoda. The zen atmosphere, provided by the big Buddha at the entrance of the garden, relaxes us and clears the images of the morning crush in the shanghaian subway out of our minds. Turtles and wildly over fed red fish swim into the tiny lake at the bottom of the garden. They vainly hope someone throws a few biscuit crumbs which won't come because it's a diet day today!

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A few minutes later, we embark on a wooden junk in order to enjoy the canals the city is renowned for. We glide over the water and we infiltrate into the narrow canals. The boatman beats time. Weeping willows line the banks before we cross some rickety houses bathed by the canal water.

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We walk on southward. We visit the historical center of the town and another peaceful garden. A relaxing and enriching day before taking a return bus to reimmerse ourselves in the Shanghai excitement.

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Sunday 19 August 2007

The seething city of Shanghai

From the motorway, in the distance, the concrete and glass colossuses of the thriving district of Pudong loom. It's precisely this district which started a metamorposis about 20 years ago and keeps on raising up thanks to foreign investments. It's today the economic lung of China ; not bad for a district that was a marshyland about thirty years behind!

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Since 1990 the annual growth rate exceeds 10%, a genuine paradise for capitalist people when the government vainly tries to reconcile a communist policy in a city that is the total opposite of this idea. An increasing pitch between the neo-capitalist Chinese people and their compatriots who drive a rickshaw or sell vegetables can be seen everywhere in the street. In spite of the frightening, hard-to-accept contradictions, the first steps in the city are thrilling.

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We wander about among the glass towers. Some of them are under construction and others didn't get out from the ground yet. High hedges mark out the building sites. Virtual skyscrapers-to-be representations are shown on them. On the other bank, at the end of the Bund (pedestrian street alongside the river), another gigantic project is under progress; the construction of the offshore port of Shanghai. A project that should end for the 2010 world exhibition the city will organize.
The evening stroll on the Bund is heady, the buildings on the other bank are adorned with many colours while the restaurant-boats and promotional boats come and go on the river. They took the place of the diurnal activity of barges and merchant ships.

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The growth of the city is recent but its districts already have their history and their singularity. The old town and French concession districts offer nice time before taking the Maglev to go to the airport. The first magnetic levitation train in the world. No railroad and an incredible average speed of 430km/h ! No excuse any more to arrive late at your office!

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Before leaving Shanghai, we hop on a lift which propels us up to the second sphere of the oriental pearl tower. A magical view over the turbulent Shanghai. We see several plots of land will change all, in a more or less long future, into pharaonic projects.

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Friday 17 August 2007

Poetic inspiration on the yellow mountains

17 hours by train from Guilin to Tunxi, beside the yellow mountains. We only have 3 berth tickets and we thought we could travel together inside the sleeping car. But the inspectors watch out at the entrance of the restaurant car, this one makes the link between the sleeping cars and the normal carriages. And inspectors prevent everybody from going from a kind of carriage to another one. We drop our idea. One of us will travel into a normal carriage trying to find a seat among the crowd and Pierre, the unlucky one, will do it.
We arrive at 5 am and take the station nearest hotel. Outside, minivans commute from the city to the park entrance of the yellow mountains, 1h30 from here. A lot of Chinese tourists arrive by train and directly carry on with the coach journey. When the last seat is engaged, the driver moves off.
At the park entrance, buses leave to reach the both ways (east or west) that lead to the top. Each of them has a cable car which allows to skip the morning and exhausting stairs stage. We opt for the west trail and for going up by cable car despite the impressive 3-hour wait. The yellow mountains massif is the most famous and the most visited in China and we experience that among the turnstile-accumulated crowd. Around 12 o'clock, we take off towards the summits of the massif.
The poets in the pursuit of their lost muse or the painters harnessing the impressions of the secret alchemy between the lifeless rock and pine trees draw their inspiration from these mountains and then spread their works of art throughtout China. At some time of the year, a stratus bed bathes the peaks and complements the symphony of the massif.

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The staircases pace the place up and go towards the most majestic peaks. The peculiar shape of the pine trees and their tiered branches pop out and gush out from the rocky heaps. The opposition between the round and smooth lines of the stone and the knotty branches of the trees draw the notes of a symphony. Our eyes mark the rhythm and the cameras immortalize a few great moments. I haven't taken any easel, brushes and gouache tubes but my memory will keep the impressions of this savoury blend of colours.

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Like a good movie, you cannot summarize it, you must see it and live it in. Forget the extraordinary wait for the cable car, Clear away the exhaustion of a whole night spent in a overcrowded train, the yellow mountains don't only raise the senses of painters and poets and bring serenity and happiness to anyone who paces them up.

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