China
March
- April 2006
From Newark, we flew over the
North Pole and Siberia,
directly to Beijing... a 13-hour flight.
A
quick orientation...
Our
Route in China
(See maps below)
Wonderful friends Chor and YuLin, Tom's former boss and his wife,
generously invited us to accompany them on their journey deep into
China:
a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see China with people
who speak its language and know its culture and traditions!
Tom had been to China several times in the last year,
but it was my first time.
What a thrill!
Our magnificent month-long trip took us from Beijing
and
a section of the Great Wall 58 km north of there,
1518 km (943 mi.) west by plane, to Chengdu,
the capital of Sichuan Province and
home of the Giant Panda Breeding and Research Center.
Map
of Sichuan Province
(left below)
Note Jiuzhaigou, Chengdu, Leshan and Chongqing
Click
map to enlarge.
From Chengdu we took a flight north 400 km for three days at Jiuzhaigou,
a spectacular mountain and lakes filled nature preserve at c. 15,000
ft., one of
the UNESCO World Heritage Sites in
China,
in the ethinic Tibetan region near the Gansu border;
and then northeast by van to the rare geological karst
of Huanglong at 12,000 ft.
Until
I can get more of our photos up, check out these:
Click
here
After a flight back to Chengdu and a night in the city,
we hired a driver for a day-trip by car to the the
world's oldest dam at Dujiangyan,
and to Leshan for the Great
Buddha.
Turning southeast 351 km (218 mi.) we went to Chongqing
to catch our cruise down the Yangtze
River to Wuhan, via
the Three Gorges and Three Minor Gorges,
plus the new Dam;
Map
of Yangtze River
Note Chengdu, Chongqing, Wuhan and Shanghai
Click
map to enlarge.
And finally a flight from Wuhan to Shanghai.
From Shanghai Tom and I flew to Osaka,
Japan,
for
four nights in Kyoto and Tokyo.
It was my first return to Japan since 1953.
What a thrill to once again experience the Japanese people
and its culture and traditions, which are similar to those I had loved
while living on Okinawa over 50 years ago!
And to see a bit more of Japan than I had seen back then,
including my first trip to Kyoto.
And best of all, to introduce Tom to them all!
A Japan section to follow.
I'll
try to show you a bit about all of these places and more,
in the pages to come.
(I have a good start, but It will take a while to get the photos of
each place up,
since I am having to select from over 3000 photos!
You can keep checking back for the next sections of this.)
First
stop Beijing...
Click
here
