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I made plans to visit the city of Tangshan to visit some people. Tangshan is the city where a massive earthquake hit in 1976, killing over 200,000 people.

Outside the city, I was able to visit a village and get a tour of a factory that makes a sweet specialty snack. The box says the business has been family owned since the year 1577, currently run by the 17th generation of the family. I stayed in the home of the 18th generation son in Tangshan. It appeared I was the first foreigner who has visited this factory, so they were excited and took many pictures with me. They gave me some boxes of their product as gifts and it was a nice experience.

It has been cold and windy lately.

I’m here in Guangzhou with the intention of going to Myanmar next. However, this did not happen since I have a connection in Bangkok, Thailand. The Suvarnbhumi Airport has been closed down for a week because anti-government protesters took over the entire airport, which is the 18th most busy in the world, blocked off the road, and canceled all flights. This included two flights I scheduled.

Unsure about when the airport would open, I bought a train ticket for Beijing where I can stay for free while things are sorted out.

Using high-speed rail, Shanghai is only 40 minutes away from Suzhou. Arriving in Shanghai was a much better experience compared to the first time I arrived here (my first day in mainland China). Maybe it was the time of day I arrived (1:30PM), but the ticket office was not very full and the subway did not seem very full.

I tried a hostel in a different area of the city this time. I tried some different street food, like some dumplings which seem popular here.

My last day here I left on a 17 hour train to Guangzhou.

From Nanjing, I took the train 1.5 hours to Suzhou. This city is known for gardens and canals. I decided to visit the biggest and best garden, the Humble Administrator’s Garden. Filled with lakes, pavilions, bridges, big collection of bonsai trees, this city is the prototype for many Chinese gardens everywhere. (photos)

The next day I took a day trip to the old town of Tongli. This is an even better example of the canal network. I paid for one ticket for the entire town and it allowed me to enter some of the houses which were like museums. A little similar to Greenfield Village in Michigan. (photos)

Running through this whole area is the Grand Canal, the longest ever built in the world (over 1000 miles) and built over  many centuries like the Great Wall.

I spent today at the Zhongshan Scenic Area. This included Linggu Temple, Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s Mausoleum, and Ming Xiaoling Mausoleum. It is a nice forested park home to all these tombs and winding paths. The Ming tomb had a burial mound 400m in diameter, but too bad I couldn’t get too close to it since they had that area closed off for renovation. The tomb also had a Sacred Way path with stone animals on both sides.

When I got back I got a huge bowl of noodles for under $1.

This morning I changed hostels. The last one I stayed at had only two toilets for the entire building and everything was so cramped. The new one has a new location directly on one of the canals in the city and you can see traditional style buildings on both sides of the canal.

Today I visited the ruins of the Ming Dynasty Palace here in town. This was the capital of China in the early 1400’s. Then I visited the Nanjing Museum. And then I stopped by the south gate of the city, which gives you some perspective on how these cities used to look 100 years ago with huge walls and gates going tens of miles around the city.

Finally it was a visit to the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall which is a museum about how 300,000 people died in this city during the Japanese occupation in World War II. It is the reason why most Chinese people hate Japanese to this date.

After 15 hours, I arrived in Nanjing. Starting to get into southern China now and the weather is getting nicer. After getting checked into my hostel, I returned to the train station to find out how to get to the Yangshan Stone Tablet. This place isn’t mentioned in any guidebooks, and it was difficult to figure out which bus to take there. Luckily, a woman approached me after a while and she was going the same direction and was getting a few people together to share a van. So that worked out well because I don’t know if I would have made it there otherwise.

The Yangshan Stone Tablet is, I think, the biggest partially quarried stone in the world. The emperor Yongle ordered to make it about 600 years ago, but it was just too big to move, so they stopped. They cut these three massive pieces. The plan was to stack the three stones up to reach over 70m tall. About half the height of the Washington Monument, but with only three stones. There was also a martial arts show there for some reason afterwards. There were very few tourists to see this place, since it is virtually unknown.

After finding a bus back to the train station, I went to Qixia Temple. Very scenic area, filled with autumn colors, caves, and I could see the foundation of emperor Qianlong’s palace which he setup in a nice area.

I’ve been able to try some cooking here in Beijing. I’ve been able to cook some French toast (soy milk and eggs), but there isn’t any syrup around here to put on top. Then I was able to cook spaghetti using some imported sauce from the US (costs $3 for one can here). I also got to try a couple simple Chinese dishes like stir frying vegetables. It seems like the Chinese food tastes better here than if I try at home.

It has been a struggle with my in-ear headphones. I didn’t even own them a year before they started breaking. And now they are nearly unusable. So I’ve been looking around at some replacements. In the only Apple store in China I noticed some new Klipsch models a few weeks ago, but so expensive. I tried to find some other models, but they are kind of hard to find in China and the price is higher than in the US. I decided to get some cheap ones for now, some fake $5 Sony model. We’ll see how long I can take it with the cheap ones, because they do sound pretty bad.

I also bought an enclosure for an 80GB hard drive I have with me. I’m using this drive to backup some photos.

Next stop is Nanjing, by way of sleeper train.

The first stop this morning was at the Hebei Provincial Museum, which was unfortunately undergoing renovation. They just had a few photo galleries open, including one about the “truth” behind the Lhasa riots in Tibet earlier this year.

Then it was a trip to Mt. Cangyang. I found out this was where they filmed the ending scene to the movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. And it was very impressive with a steep cliffs. Then bridge spanning the point where two cliffs come together. I think it was worth the trouble to get here.

The next day, it was a trip to the city of Zhengding. First stop was Longxing Temple, which had a recently rebuilt building that houses a huge statue. Then it was off to Zhao Yun Temple because this was the home town of a famous person in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms story  and in a couple movies recently all set in 3rd century China. Zhengding is a really interesting town. It was fun to visit the four pagodas around the town.

I did miss the Zhaozhou Bridge, which is one of the oldest standing arch stone bridges in the world at 1400 years.

Then it was a fast “D” train back to Beijing to prepare for the next part of my trip.

Back north, I prepared to visit a couple more places in Hebei province.

I’ve noticed around Asia that more often than not speedometers are disconnected on vehicles. I suspect most people do this so the odometer number does not increase. Just another example of how there are few rules here.