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What should you see if you go to China? Of course it depends on the amount of time (and money) that you have available. But also, if you have heard of something and dreamed of seeing it, then make that a must. Do images of the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, Terracotta Warriors, or misty mountains attract you? Then be sure to see them. In fact, you could see all of these four in one week — but not much more.

How should you go? As an independent traveller it will be more exciting and unpredictable and cheaper. With a tour group it will be more efficient and predictable but costlier and more constrained. Each way has its own frustations and rewards. More on that later.

>Introduction to China

First, a sketch of China. It is a very large country (3,695,500 square miles (without Tibet 3.2 million); 9,571,300 square kilometers; 1,273,111,300 people; ) comparable in size to Australia (2,966,200 sqm; 7,692,300 sqk; 19.4 million people), Brazil (3,300,171 sqm; 8,547,404 sqk; 171.5 million people) , and the United States (3,717,796 sqm (without Alaska 3.1 million sqm); 9,629,047 sqk; 278 million people).  All populations are estimates for 2001.

There are numerous geographic similaries between the USA and China. The largest part of their respective populations live on their east coasts and places farther west are relatively less populated and less developed. Along the east coast of China the main cities are Beijing, Nanjing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong. These can be compared in relative position to New York, Charlotte, Atlanta, and Miami. For example, air distance Beijing-Hong Kong is 1215 miles and New York-Miami is 1100 miles. In China, Xian, Chengdu, Chongqing, and Kumming lie along a line, roughly north to south, 600-800 miles west of the Pacific. These correspond to Chicago, St Louis, Memphis, and New Orleans in relative distances and importance. Far in the southwest are Lhasa (Tibet), 1600 miles SW of Beijing and  Urumqi, 1500 m W of Beijing. These are the rough equivalent (by distance, not sites) of Yellowstone and Alberquerque.

The "big" river in the United States is the north-to-south Missisippi. In China is is the west-to-east Yangtze. Lying along it are many of the big cities already mentioned: Chengdu (just off), Chongqing, Wuhan (the Pittsburgh or Detroit of China), Nanjing, and Shanghai (also just off). From west to east this these stretch out about 1050 (air) miles. (A river cruise the whole way takes about 10 days. The popular tourist cruises do the middle section and take 4-5 days.)

Besides the Yangtze there are two other major rivers in China, almost though not quite so west to east. In the north is the Wei River - Yellow River system, with the major cities of Xi'an, Luoyang, Zhengzhou, and Jinan and lying near but not on it. Historically it has been too prone to flooding to chance having a major city in or near the flood plain. Of these only Xi'an lies in the first rank of tourist interest. In the south is the Pearl River and its tributaries. This river system , with a mouth  between Hong Kong and Macao, reaches far into the interior.

A note on pronuciation: The Chinese language is normally written in ideograms (also know as characters). These give no clue to pronuciation; in fact the northern language, Putonghua (also known as Mandarin), and the southern language, Guangdonghua (also known as Cantonese), use the same ideograms but are pronouced differently. For example, the ideogram for the number 5 is pronounced in Putonghua as "wu" and in Guongdonghua as "ng". The former nationalist ruler's name in Putonghua is "Jiang Jie Shi" while he is known in Guangdonghua (and English) as Chiang Kai Shek.

The official Chinese government scheme for representing the pronunciation of Putonghua is pinyin. Pinyin uses our familiar English (or Latin) letters; most of the letters have nearly our standard English pronunciation but "c", "q", and "x" are markedly different. Pinyin "c" is pronounced like the ts in the word "lets".  For example the name "Cai" is pronounced "Tsai". Pinyin "q" is pronounced like English "ch". Thus Pinyin "Chongqing" is close to Engish "chungching"; Pinyin "x" is in between English "s" and "sh". Thus Pinyin "Xi'an'" is between English "si-an" and "shi-an". Also, Pinyin "d" is halfway between English "d" and "t". Thus the word for road, Pinyin "dao" is often written in English as "tao" and Pinyin "Mao Zedong" is often written "Mao Tse Tong". Pinyin "g" is halfway between English "g" and "k". Thus the name of the nationalist party in Pinyin is "Guo Min Dang" and  "Kwo Min Tang." In all of these examples niether the Pinyin nor the "English" will tell you exactly how to pronounce a word. You have to hear it first. But Pinyin is probably close enough.

>The Chinese Empire

"China" is thought to be an ancient land. And that is certainly true of a certain region that might be called its heartland. But political China with today's border is a very recent creation. China has existed as it is today no more than the United States has always been a continental nation and no more than the British Isles have always been a unified English speaking nation and no more than Poland, Germany, France, or the European Union have always had the borders they had. Today's China is the (final?) result of empires that have grown and shrunk, fragmented and merged.

What we call "Chinese" is more accurately called Han culture. These people originated in the eastern plain of China in the general area around the lower Yellow River and within a few hundred miles of the Pacific ocean. This area corresponds to less than 1/50th of the Peoples Republic of China. The ancient people discovered and perfected rice growing culture and it is probably because of that and perhaps superior organizational skills that they, starting about 500 BC began to expand and conquer surrounding territories. As they did so they spread their culture. In fact, the Han were sometimes conquered by neighbors, and each time, instead of losing their culture to a new superimposed culture, instead the conquerors gradually adopted the Han culture.

Han expansion leap frogged the mountainous area south of the Yangtze and north of the Pearl River to colonize the Pearl River basin. This was done before 1000 a.d

IN 600 AD The Hans, in particular, the XX Dynansty conquered the area that now is the northern 1/3 of Vietnam. Rice cultivation and other aspects of Han culture were introduced . This led to the formation of the proto-Vietnamese culture.

Before 1600 the Han culture extended only as far north as the Great Wall, which passes in a roughtly east-west line 60 miles  north of Beijing. The wall was built to keep out northern invaders. But in 1600 the Manchus through trickery (and not a frontal attack) passed the wall and conqued "China". Thus ended the Ming dynasty and began the Qing (pronounced "Ching") dynasty. For the next three hundred years the emperors of "China" were Manchus. But (officially at least) the area north of the wall remained Manchu land and Manchu the official language. All official documents were both in Han ideograms and Manchu (which is written in a script).

In 1912 there was a revolution and the last Qing emperor was overthrown. The first Chinese republic was established under (Sun Yat Sen  in Guandonghua and English). Their initial viewpoint was that they, the Han, were gaining independence from the Manchus. Sun Yat Sen soon died and after a power struggle Jiang Jie (Chiang Kai Shek) gained power, which he held from 1920-1949, although over a nearly constantly shrinking dominion. For the Communist Party of China was founded in 1919 and almost from its very earliest days tried to organize a revolt against the "national" government. In 1925? the expansionist Japanese empire, using its colony of Korea as a jumping off point, invaded Manchuria, quicking conquered it, and renamed it Manchuko. They set up the ex Qing emperor, Pu Yu, as a puppet, but proceded to force Japanese culture on the people. From about 1940 the United States began to aid the Nationalist Chinese government; from the bombing of Pearl Harbo on December 7, 1941 the Chinese-Japanese war became part of World War II.

During and after WWII the Communists and Nationalists fought each other as much as they fought the Japanese. In fact, the Japanese were so ruthless, that it was too dangerous to fright them head on. The Japanese simply killed all the people in any area that dared to revolt. After all, they did not want Chinese subjects; they wanted wanted land for Japanese.

Both countries have a mixture of ethnic peoples, a result of consequest, expansion, and immigration. For the United States, the west has Indian minorities such as Navahos and Hopis and immigrant minorities such as Vietnames and Iranians. For China large parts of the far west are non-Han (the name given to the preponderant culture.) In the far south west are Tibetian Buddhists. In the far west and north west are Turkic Muslims. And in the far south and southwest are peoples related to the Thais and Burmanese.

>Religion and Temples

Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism,

About the beginning of the Christian era, Buddhism was carried to Central Asia. From there it entered China along the trade routes by the early 1st century ad. Although opposed by the Confucian orthodoxy and subject to periods of persecution in 446, 574-77, and 845, Buddhism was able to take root, influencing Chinese culture and, in turn, adapting itself to Chinese ways. The major influence of Chinese Buddhism ended with the great persecution of 845, although the meditative Zen, or Ch’an (from Sanskrit dhyana,”meditation”), sect and the devotional Pure Land sect continued to be important.

Microsoft® Encarta® Reference Library 2002. © 1993-2001 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Chinese Philosophy, collective designation for the various schools of thought originated by Chinese scholars and sages. Chinese philosophy has passed through three distinct historical stages: the classical age, a creative period from the 6th to the 2nd century bc; the medieval age, from the 2nd century bc to the 11th century ad, a period of synthesis and absorption of foreign thought; and the modern age, from the 11th century to the present, a period of maturation of earlier philosophical trends and introduction of new philosophies from the West. Throughout all these periods, Chinese thought has tended toward humanism rather than spiritualism, rationalism rather than mysticism, and syncretism rather than sectarianism.

Microsoft® Encarta® Reference Library 2002. © 1993-2001 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

>Primary Tourist Sites

There are three "Great Walls" near Beijing, each 50-60 miles. We've been to two of them and both were great. Count on two hours to get out or to get back.

Distances: Nanjing - 120 miles - Suzhou - 20 miles - Zhouzhuang - 80 miles - Hangzhou - 105 miles - Shanghai - 55 miles - Suzhou
You can get between the places by train, bus, or hired car. The train will cost you about 10 cents a mile or less (First class trains are comfortable and fast in Eastern China). A hired car can probably be had for the day for under $50 with driver. (These last numbers are very rough guesses). Count on 50-60 miles/hour on a train and 40-60 miles/hour in a car. There is of course overhead of getting to a train or bus station and waiting for the departure.

Hotel: We have no Beijing experience. We stayed in an apartment. Three years ago in Nanjing we stayed in the Hilton for a weekend special of $50/night including breakfast, swimming pool, and a bowling round. In Hangzhou we stayed in the "Golden Dragon??" for $50 because we bargained; that was the price without breakfast; it was very modern. Our Suzhou hotels were cheaper but not as nice.

http://www.thesalmons.org/lynn/wh-china.html lists Great Wall, Mount Taishan.

>Primary Suggestion for Eight Day Trip

Beijing - 3 days See http://www.beijing.gov.cn/english/attractions.asp for a Beijing government list of attractions.

Beijing and Vicinity - 3 Days

Nanjing - 2 days:

Suzhou - 1 day.

Zhouzhang - 1 day.

Hangzhou - 1 day

>Take an evening train to Shanghai or fly to Beijing or Hong Kong, etc.