When Charmione and Don Jones decided to travel to and through China last year, they found the adventures of centuries in a trip to last a lifetime.

Setting out from their home in Lake Junaluska, the Haywood County couple flew one day around the world where they toured along the ancient Yangtze River, walked on the Great Wall of China, witnessed towering skyscrapers in Hong Kong and Shanghai, and strolled through Buddhist temples and village markets.

China, the most populous country in the world (1.3 billion and counting) and the third-largest in land size, is home to one of the oldest civilizations on the planet with a diverse culture and geography that astounds the scientists and poets who have tried to put this nation and its titanic history into words.

Though China relishes in its proud past, it has experienced a modern transformation over the last 10 years with the building of skyscrapers, modern airports and train terminals. The world’s largest dam -- Three Gorges Dam -- is now under construction on the Yangtze. Western culture is penetrating the once isolationist country, and China’s communist leaders are seeking to propell the nation into a 21st century global market.

Surely, it was a stretch to capture the feel of China in a matter of days, but the Joneses tried to collect all they could -- Charmione with notes in her journal and Don with about 1,150 photographs.

Not surprisingly, they came away with a great deal of respect for China’s sheer size and way China celebrates itself with huge monuments -- the Great Wall of China, Tiananmen Square (the largest public square in the world) and towering skyscrapers in Shanghai and Hong Kong. There are not-to-be-missed, larger-than-life tourist stops in China such as the lavishly decorated Forbidden City of the Chinese Emperors, and the world famous terra cotta soldiers in the Museum of the Qin Emperor’s Tomb in the city of Xian.

“I think size was symbolic,” Don said.

The Great Wall was built in sections sometime between 400-200 B.C. to keep out invaders. Successive rulers extended the sinuous wall until by the 16th Century A.D. it was some 4,000 miles long. If you decide to tour the Great Wall, be prepared for a hike, Don said.

“Travel is as much vertical as it is horizontal,” Don said.

Chinese civilization dates back to 4,000 B.C. By 207 B.C., rulers of the Qin Dynasty had united Chinese people, set standards for weights, measures and a written language. Oil wells were drilled using bronze and bamboo to depths of more than 1,000 feet.

The Han Dynasty (202 B.C. - A.D. 220) propelled China even further as the Silk Road to Europe developed, gun powder and paper were invented, and Confucianism began serving as the basis for education and admission to civil service (which still exists today).

Later during the Tang Dynasty (618-906), China prospered in its golden age of arts and poetry. Under the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) emperors re-established themselves after falling to the Mongols. Free once again, Chinese rulers set up isolationist policies, made Buddhism and Taoism state religions, and built the Forbidden City and Temple of Heaven in Beijing. The last Chinese dynasty -- the Qing Dynasty -- lasted from 1644 until 1911, and in 1924 Emperor Puyi left the Forbidden City.

While the Beijing of today still maintains a reverence to its imperial past, its current communist climate reveals a great respect for more recent figures. Mao Zedong, leader of the cultural revolution that transformed China into a communist state, has his own crystal tomb in Tiananmen Square which is raised and lowered each day for viewers to see.

China’s current leader, President Jiang Zemin, has worked on making strides with the West, and the government is allowing more private businesses. Just last year, the United States normalized trade relations with China.

It’s hard to take in China even with a planned tour, but Don and Charmione Jones set out to see a good part of the countryside as well as the biggest cities. Their tour took them from Beijing, China’s capital of 11 million people, to Xian (home of the terra cotta statues) and then to Chongqing, a city in central China built on the side of a mountain at the confluence of the Yangtze and Jailing rivers. They also visited Wuhan, Hangzhou, Shanghai, Guilin and Hong Kong.

Sampling the natural beauty of Chongqing, the Joneses soon felt the rush of street children -- some that looked as young as 3 years old -- selling postcards and bric-a-brac for “one dollah! one dollah!”

“Children are encouraged to work,” Charmione wrote in her journal during the trip. “And if parents can’t pay the 400 Yuan (approx. $50) per semester per child, the child doesn’t go to school but instead remains on the street urging tourists to buy for ‘one dollah’ -- though legally school is compulsory until the age of 16.”

Taking an excursion to the Ghost City at Fengdu downstream from Chongqing, the Joneses found themselves in a carnival type area with a fascinating blend of pagodas, amusement park attractions, and strange colorful statues of supernatural beings that, as Charmione described, looked like something out of a Chinese-style Dante’s Inferno. Much like the diversity of China, Ghost City is a magical mix of Taoism, Buddhism and Confucianism.

Meals could be quite exotic, the Joneses discovered. During one, they sat around a table with a gas burner in the center and a large container filled with hot spices and bubbling broth and a smaller container with not quite so hot spices and broth. Each person cooked his or her own food in the containers and retrieved it with a small, long-handled metal cup-shaped sieve.

“It was very messy,” Charmione recalled. “We had a choice of cooking hairtail (a fish), duck intestines, ox tripe, black fungus, sliced eel, mouse fish, ox throat, lotus root, bean curd and other, more familiar things.”

With each meal, the Joneses found some pleasant surprises and some things they expected. For one thing, Chinese food is quite different from Chinese-American food -- different spices and tastes. Rice, as one would expect, is very prevalent. Breakfasts included quail eggs and oatmeal. Restaurants typically have a lazy susan at each table. Watermelon is a favorite for dessert.

The Joneses traveled through China by plane, bus, foot and boat. Going down the brown muddy Yangtze River from Chongqing, then transferring to smaller boats to explore the majestic mountainside gorges along the Daning River, the Joneses learned that much of what they saw would eventually be submerged under water when the largest dam in the world is built. Whole villages will be moved and millions of people will have to be taken to higher ground when the Three Gorges Dam causes water levels to rise about 600 feet above current levels. The dam is expected to become a source of much-needed electricity and will also help control floods and irrigation. It’s supposed to be completed by 2009.

While in Shanghai, the Joneses went through a self-contained village with shops, schools, a hospital and a market with every kind of food imaginable. A Chinese couple -- Mr. and Mrs. Li -- invited the Joneses and their small tour group into their home for a meal.

“At the end of the meal,” Charmione explained, “Mrs. Li gave each of us a closed jasmine flower which had a wire attached to it to hang on our shirts. It was like wearing a live perfume. We wore them for the rest of the day.”

Another stop took them to a kindergarten. As the Joneses and their tour group got off the bus, a horde of children greeted them gleefully. Many of the children wore American icons on their shirts -- Mickey Mouse, Big Bird, etc. The tour group was taken into a school room where the children performed traditional music and dance. Afterwards, the children took their visitors by the hands and led them into classrooms.

“How are you?” one girl asked Don.

“Fine, thank you,” Don said, helping the girl test her English. “And how are you?”

“I’m not feeling very well today,” the girl said.

The child was, in fact, fine, Charmione noticed. She was just using the English she was learning.

During a later trip through the breathtaking Guilin Province, the Joneses were able to travel along the serene Li River landscape that has inspired poets and artists for centuries. Thin rocky hills jut up sharply and graceful birds glide through misty peaks.

At night, Don and Charmione witnessed a demonstration of a fisherman using specially trained cormorant birds that would dive down into the water and catch fish. The birds have a string around their necks so they won’t swallow the fish when they catch them.

The China tour took Don and Charmione through bustling cities, small villages, and specially preserved historic sites. While in Hong Kong, they visited a giant Buddha statue on a remote island mountain monastery. Although only a small percentage of China’s population is Buddhist, the religion which originated in India, has a long history in Chinese culture and many holy temples are still kept up today.
On the way to the island, Charmione could see the statue of Buddha sitting on a lotus blossom on the top of a mountain ridge.

“What a colossal sight,” Charmione said. “Upon arriving, we still had 233 steps to climb before standing a the foot of the Buddha. This Buddha looked compassionate, as though to say, ‘Well done, weary traveler.’”

Weary travelers indeed. After returning home and going through photos and recalling seemingly endless experiences, Charmione admitted there’s still much to learn about China and its culture.

“You feel stretched when you have an experience like China,” Charmione said. “And there’s so many questions that you don’t find the answers to.”

But with an open mind and some comfortable walking shoes, one can hope to find a whole new world waiting.

 

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