by Ellsworth Brown
Two Weeks in China with the Carnegie Museums’ Travel Program
The president of Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh
shares the journal he kept of his travels during the tour “In the Steps
of Marco Polo,” May 419, 1998. This adventure was one of many offered
to members of Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh in its 1998 Travel Program.
Now is the time to plan your own travels with Carnegie Museums. These
tours are tailored to the interests of our members, and draw upon the expertise
and world-wide connections of our own Carnegie Museums staff. See the list
of future tours at the end of “China Diary.”
Ed.
Preparatory comments about the People’s Republic of China were not flattering
to that country. Hepatitis
people spit
they push their way into lines,
don’t know how to queue up. Carry Vicks Vapo-Rub, someone advised me. A
dash under my nose at night would disguise unpleasant local odors. A few
refused to consider the trip
”the last time, my husband saw rats in the
hotel.” Current travel literature warned that we might be moved from passenger
to military aircraft, and that flights were often cancelled without explanation.
Well-armed with an array of concerns, our Carnegie Museums group of
18 embarked on a two-week tour led by Abercrombie & Kent and an indomitable
Chinese-American guide named Margaret Chen Turner. As insulated voyeurs
staying in hotels equal to fine American lodging, we avoided the trauma
of predictions and witnessed a country of remarkable scale, economic energy
and determination. To a person, we returned home carrying indelible images
of a strange and wonderful land.
The entourage from Pittsburgh with guide Margaret
Chen Turner in the first row. Ellsworth stands third from the right
in the back.
The itinerary was mandatory for first-time visitors, as most of us were:
Shanghai, a seaport of raw energy, determined to displace Hong Kong
as shipping tonnage leader; home of the sophisticated Shanghai Museum,
which reopened in new quarters in 1996 with outstanding collections of
bronze, ceramics, painting, and calligraphy.
Chongqing, industrial gray, too hilly for bicycles, with a point of
embarkation down a treacherous half mile of steps to the Yangze and our
great white boat, the MS Queen.
The Yangze and its Gorges, somber under driven rain, endlessly beautiful.
Tour group members participated in a dragon boat
race in Zigui-and won!
Wuhan, generous host, place of a Pittsburgh-Wuhan Friendship Committee
reunion augmented by Mayor Tom Murphy and a Pittsburgh delegation; place
of hospitality, two official banquets, and the signing of a bi-city protocol;
and place of a speech at Wuhan University by Pittsburgh’s Robert Littlefield,
who was awarded a guest professorship.
Xi’an, city of clay: brick walls and buildings, warriors, burial mounds,
and conspicuous tourists.
Beijing, capital city, welcoming city, Forbidden City, Summer Palace
city, more cars, more bicycles, more VIPs, and near the Great Wall.
Carnegie Museums sponsors a variety of trips each year. We chose China
because we were eager to see the Three Gorges prior to the completion of
the great dam; and we believed that we could leverage unusual opportunities
for our group because of our Chinese contacts. Several Chinese citizens
work at Carnegie Museum of Natural History, which sends scientists to China
annually on a quest for the fossils of early mammals that coexisted with
late-period dinosaurs.
Our expectations were fulfilled. We gained access to closed rooms in
the Forbidden City: the “office” of the “last emperor” (see the movie),
concubines’ heated bathhouse (empty!), traveling exhibitions in preparation.
We climbed an isolated section of the Great Wall, and half of us rappelled
down a tower to the ground.
We met special people: Dr. Li Chao Yuan, deputy director of the Shanghai
Museum, who took us to private quarters for our orientation; Prof. Wang
Xue Li, head of Xi’an’s terra cotta warriors archaeology team, who hosted
us for tea; Madam Ding Hua, Wuhan’s famous if unofficial hostess, who specified
a formal dinner of spectacular presentation; Qian Yun Lu, secretary of
the Wuhan Municipal Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and host for
a formal lunch; small children who danced, plucked, and sang to us; and
“Sunny” Sun, our official Beijing CITS guide. Sunny was smart, confident,
and candid, and she aspired to open her own travel agency, which is now
permissible in China.
Images continue to tumble through the mind, for China is a land of consistent
and powerful architecture, of stark contrasts: limousines crawling patiently
behind the human-drawn dray carts passing a five-star hotel; limited amenities
and a clean, polite people; the brooding, heavy beauty of the Gorges, and
the power of the new Yangze dam, the largest construction site in human
history.
We were amazed by the country’s active reconstruction of its treasures
for Chinese and tourist alike, while studiously failing to maintain its
buildings. The extraordinary number of construction cranes and the lashed
bamboo scaffolding rising up with it impressed us.
Most of all, we were taken by the gentleness and kindness of people
who worked hard and served cheerfully; by the economic energy unleashed
in the land; and by the continuous, panoramic, public living in contrasts
of rich and poor, of countless people everywhere we went.
I might add, personally, that the Carnegie entourage harbored good cheer
and mutual respect, and was always eager to shop and to see the next site
the guides would invariably call out, with common accent, as “farmers and
popler.” China is now better understood and will remain, “famous and popular”
for us. There is mounting demand for a trek over the Great Silk Road next.
Please consider one of our Carnegie trips. Each will be memorable
in its own way.
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