An excellent evening meal in the Hotel Restaurant followed by a good night’s sleep and I am ready to meet up with my fellow passengers. On returning to the hotel yesterday afternoon I had beenphoned by Paul Liang who is to be our Viking Escort for the duration of thetrip. He tells me that there are 239 guests on this particular trip and we are divided into smaller groups of 38each with a dedicated guide. This proved to be a very well organised journey with no hitches at all either on the daily tours, the river cruise or the internal flights.
The evening meal also proved to be very enjoyable. I arrived to be greeted in what was by now becoming a very familiar friendly and courteous manner. The buffet was enormous with all kinds of cuisine available – Chinese, Japanese Sushi, India, Western and many more. I must have been looking a little mesmerised since I was soon approached by a friendly waiter who escorted me round the entire buffet explaining all the dishes on offer!! He then offered to select the best of the Chinese dishes all of which proved to be excellent especially when eaten with chopsticks. The lemon chicken was the best for me!
The meal was accompanied by local beer and the China Times an English daily newspaper and very good it is too. It made interesting reading to find that the Chinese Government is worried by a slow down in GDP from 8.3% to 8.1% but the problems in the US and Europe reduce demand for Chinese goods. At the end of the meal the Restaurant proprietor came to settle my bill and once again I was made to feel that my custom was much appreciated and my visit to China of genuine interest!
We left the hotel early at 7.45am primarily to miss the rush hour traffic, and to get to our first destination the Garden of Peace before the crowds and the other 6 Viking groups. This is a classical and extensive Chinese garden located beside the City God Temple in the northeast of the Old City of Shanghai.
Chinese gardens (Source Wikipedia) traditionally recreate natural landscapes in miniature. The style has evolved for more than three thousand years, and includes both thevast gardens of the Chinese emperors and smaller gardens built by scholars,poets, and former government officials. The classical Chinese garden is enclosed by a wall and has one or more ponds, a rock garden, trees and flowers, and an assortment of halls and pavilions within the garden, connected by winding paths and zig-zag galleries. By moving from structure to structure,visitors can view a series of carefully-composed scenes, unrolling like a scroll of landscape paintings.
The Yu Garden was first conceived in 1559 during the Ming Dynasty by Pan Yunduan as a comfort for his father, the minister Pan En, in his old age. Pan Yunduan began the project after failing one of the imperial exams, but his appointment as governor of Sichuan postponed constructionfor nearly twenty years until 1577. One of the centrepieces is an exquisite Jade Rock.
Today, Yu Garden occupies an area of 5 acres, and is divided into six general areas:
- Sansui Hall (Sān Suì Táng, lit. "Three Tassel Hall") – includes the Grand Rockery (Dà Jiǎshān ), a 12-metre-high rockery made of huangshi stone, featuring peaks, cliffs, winding caves, and gorges. This scenery was possibly created during the Ming Dynasty.
- Wanhua Chamber (Wàn Huā Lóu, lit. "Chamber of the Ten Thousand Flowers")
- Dianchun Hall (Diǎn Chūn Táng, lit. "Heralding Spring Hall") – built in 1820
- Huijing Hall (Huì Jǐng Lóu)
- Yuhua Hall (Yù Huá Táng, lit. "Jade Magnificence Hall") – furnished with rosewood pieces from the Ming Dynasty
- Inner Garden (Nèi Yuán) – rockeries, ponds, pavilions, and towers; first laid out in 1709 and more recently recreated in 1956.
Each area is separated from the others by "dragon walls" with undulating grey tiled ridges, each terminating in a dragon's head.
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