China offers traditional and modern landscapes

Ruth Frazier

Mary Renner and I celebrated our retirement as speech and language

therapists with the Santa Ana Unified School District with a two-week

trip to China in October.

Beijing, with a population of some 9 million people, was the first

stop, and we visited many famous sites: Tiananmen Square, the

Forbidden City and the Temple of Heaven, to name a few. We took day

trips to other well-known spots, such as the Great Wall, Ming tombs

and the Summer Palace.

One of the highlights of Beijing was a visit to the home of a

resident in the traditional area of town, Hutong, who showed us

pictures of his visit to the United States, which included shots of

former President Jimmy Carter. We visited Prince Gong’s palace and

the largest Buddhist temple in China outside of Tibet that same day.

While in Beijing, we had the opportunity to see shops where

workers make cloisonne, carve jade and turn out other objects

interesting to tourists. Since our trip coincided with China’s

weeklong national holiday, we saw many children with their parents

visiting the important sites. They were eager to try their English on

us, and the parents often asked us to be included in family photos.

We flew southwest to the ancient city of Xian, which was once the

launching point of the celebrated Silk Road and the home of the

famous and amazing Terra Cotta warriors that were discovered in 1974

after 2,000 years of burial. There were at least 6,000 of these

warriors that were carefully unearthed and restored, along with their

armaments, horses and chariots. Some of the metal swords and spears

were chromium-plated to deter corrosion -- a process that was

rediscovered by the Germans in the 1930s.

Our next flight took us south to the tranquil subtropical area of

Guilin, where we especially enjoyed a leisurely cruise on the Li

River, viewing the karst peaks that are so popular in Chinese

paintings. Water buffalo, bamboo rafts and fishermen using cormorants

were among the sights along the way.

Shanghai and the canal towns of Wuxi, Suzhou and Zhouzhuang were

our final destinations. In Shanghai, we mingled with the people in

ultra-modern shopping malls, traveled with sluggish traffic on

multi-layered freeways and gazed in awe at the many skyscrapers.

Among all this modernity there still exist traditional areas that

look like what we expected to see in China.

We flew from Shanghai to Beijing to catch our flight to back to

Los Angeles.

Our hotels were of exceptional quality, the food quite good, and

the people truly seemed to like to interact with us.

* RUTH FRAZIER is a Costa Mesa resident.