Description: We added a day on our own to this Viking cruise to explore Shanghai since our Viking tour program did not include Shanghai other than as an overnight stop at both ends of the cruise (other Viking China trips do include some time in Shanghai including a tour program and an optional performance of Chinese opera).

The highlights of the trip were:
1] the 16th Century Yunan Garden and Bazaar in Shanghai. The Bazaar deserves both a daylight and an after dark visit;
2] Mt Jiu Hua, the location of some 86 temples and one of the four sacred Buddhist mountians in China. Atop Mt Jiu Hua was the only place we saw blue skies on the entire 14 day trip;
3] the Net Master’s Garden in Suzhou. Suzhou’s old town area is a UN World Heritage site, so well preserved that residences in the old town are not allowed to have plumbing. Chamber pots are used, and placed at the door every morning for the chamber pot collect to empty. We drove through the attractive old town, wishing there was time to walk around it, to a street near the Net Master’s Garden, one of nine classic gardens in Suzhou. The streets that lead to the garden are too narrow for motor vehicles, so we had a short walk along the old streets. There are also a number of canals in the old city. Our guide pointed out that Europeans came to call Suzhou the Venice of the East on account of the canals, but going by the age of the two cities, Venice is the Suzhou of the West.
4] Yueyang Tower (pagoda), the only one of China’s four most famous pagoda’s that is original (never rebuilt);
5] the Three Gorges;
6] the Lesser Three Gorges. This is a side trip off the Three Gorges in a smaller boat. The four hour cruise turned around just after entering the last of the Three Lesser Gorges to return to the Yangtze, but, with the narrower river, this side trip is every bit as scenic s the Three Gorges, if not more so.
7] Snow Jade Cave, near Feng Du new city. This is a fairly recently discovered cave, being know for only 10, five or two years depending on who’s account is correct. Anyhow, it is not in many guide books, but it should be for it is a spectacular cave, containing fine examples of every type of cave formation I could recall.
8] Air pollution. China’s incredibly gunky air is remarkable. The only time we saw any patches of even pale blue sky from the river was for six hours the day after an all day rain temporarily cleansed the sky, but by 4:00 pm, the crud had returned. Visibility was typically less than two miles because the pollution was so bad. I asked our guide when was the last time she had seen blue sky at one stop. She answered, "About five years ago."
9] The only fat people in China are tourists, which raises the question, ‘why is the life expectancy so low when they get lots of exercise walking and cycling and have a diet low in animal fat with lots of vegetables and fish’? For the answer, see #8.
10) The Tomb of the Marquis of Xi, at the Hubei Museum in Wuhan, is a spectacular collection of 2,500 year old artifacts on the scale of King Tut’s Tomb or the Terra Cotta Warriors. The collection included a number of ancient musical instruments whose existence was know from ancient texts but no examples of which had been found until the tomb was discovered in 1978. The most notable artifact is the carillon of bronze bells and stone chimes. The original is on display in the museum. A copy was played, and accompanied by traditional dances, for a 20 minute concert in a neighboring theater to demonstrate China’s musical capabilities of three millennia ago.
The only negative in the museum visit was that it was Monday, museum closing day and special arrangements had been made to only open the Marquis’ tomb, the bell concert, and the gift shop. We could have made better use of the time by going through the rest of the museum rather than waiting for the shoppers to finish.
11] The taxi ride to or from Pudong airport into Shanghai– real life dodgem cars without collisions that keep passengers on the edge of their seats.
12] Development. It’s not just a joke that China’s national bird is the construction crane. The pace of construction of everything– residential, business, infrastructure– is remarkable, creating some of the most modern looking cities anywhere. The Three Gorges dam project may be the most remarkable, and not only for the dam and the incredible locks that move ships up the face of the dam. The reservoir flooded the homes of 1.25 million people. More money was spent on their relocation than on the construction of the dam itself. Over the last 15 years, a series of new cities of towering modern buildings were built above the new water line to replace the now flooded old cities. No elevators were included in any apartment buildings unless they exceeded 9 floors. You see these gleaming modern cities with broad streets nearly empty of cars and trucks but crowded with pedestrians and bicycles, streets lined with the same hole in the wall shops as found in the old cities, and above it all the endless gray cloud of pollution forever blocking the sun and stars. The images do not fit.

Other sights visited:
The silk factory at Suzhou.
Nanjing, a long time capital of China, where we boarded the Viking New Century Sun river cruise ship. Unfortunately, all we did was drive through Nanjing, getting no more than a glimpse of city’s treasures– the old city wall, the seat of the Nationalist Government, and the University.
We opted out of the all day bus tour to the Jendezen Ceramic Museum because we have seen ceramics made in Deft and Meissen, and enough is enough. So we explored the city where the ship docked and waited for the return of the bus tour.
Yueyang Tower gardens and needle tea at the tea house.
A visit to an elementary school in rural Jingzhou
The Three Gorges Dam
The four hour trip through the five locks at the Three Gorges Dam.
The Shibaozhai Pagoda, built in 1650.
The city square in Changqing
Shanghai Airlines flight from Chongqing to Shanghai. This two hour flight is a lesson in how air travel should be done, and how it was done in the USA until deregulation ruined air travel at home. Coach class seats had plenty of leg room, even for people over six feet tall. The cabin crew first served beverages, then a hot lunch with a main course of noodles and beef, two vegetables, and a fruit cup, followed by coffee or tea. Let me repeat– this is coach class, coach class done right, something you will not find on any airline in America today.

Except for some time on our own, all visits were organized by Viking. At each stop, local guides joined our bus to enlighten us on the local scene, but a Viking guide also accompanied each group because China’s make work policy required Viking to utilize local guides as assigned by the state travel office, guides whose command of English ranged from excellent to about as good as your command of Chinese. All the Viking guides are capable of stepping in anywhere to deliver the local spiel, and on one occasion, our Viking guide had to take over. A couple other tours were problematic on the local guides as well.

The Viking Century Sun had the largest cabins we have seen on river cruise boats. Service was exceptional, no doubt the result of cheap labor enabling the use of a larger staff than is done in Europe. However, the Chinese cannot match the East Germans when it comes to building a ship. The engine, two floors below the dinning room, was incredibly noisy, making dinner conversation impossible at any level below bellowing at your neighbor.
We had to call for repairs to our cabin four times. Room thermostats were on the wall only for decoration. They had no effect on the temperature. The only way to modify temperatures was by changing the three speed fan, but even at the lowest setting, the room was usually to cold (we keep our house at 67-68̊ year round). Floors everywhere were oddly uneven.
Close