museums

Shanhaiguan and Old Dragon's Head - the start of the Great Wall

2hw — Sun, 22 Dec 2019 14:04:18 +0000

2hw Sun, 12/22/2019 - 16:04

The Great Wall of China is thousands of kilometers in length - many different styles, going through various landscapes, some sections restored and drawing hordes of tourists, while others crumbling out of sight. Of particular interested to us was the Old Dragon's Head - the point where the wall meets the sea, the start of this engineering marvel. It is located in the city of Shanghaiguan - just a 3 hours train ride from Beijing and is easily done in one long day tour.

Even though it is a popular attraction for the locals, there is not much information online in English on how to get to Shanghaiguan and any other attractions in the area. It was a challenge to piece together an itinerary with the limited sources. We mostly relied on odd comments here and there and a single article - https://jonworth.eu/the-great-wall-of-china-at-shanhaiguan/, which was 5 years old at the time.

The places we visited on our day trip were:

Old Dragon's Head ( Laolongtou Great Wall ) | Google Maps link
Jiumenkou Great Wall | Google Maps link
First Pass Under Heaven | Google Maps link

How to get there

To be able to do it all in one day we had to take a train from Beijing to Shanhaiguan. It takes two and a half to three hours and getting on an early train, then leaving in the evening means having a whole day to explore Shanhaiguan.

It is important to buy tickets several days in advance as they sell out quickly. Tickets can be bought online or at any train station in Beijing - more about how to do it in our article here - How to buy train tickets in China (and step-by-step at Beijing Railway station).

The earliest fast train from Beijing was D30, departing Beijing train station at 6:39 am and it got us to Shanghaiguan at around 9:30 am. For the return trip we got the 19:30 fast train and managed to get back to our hotel around 10:30 - 11 pm. It was a long day, but we managed to squeeze everything that we wanted to do in it.

Our day

At the train station at Shanhaiguan we had to make the decision how to go around the attractions:

As we exited the station, just after we crossed the exit there were a couple of touts (probably more on weekend, we visited on a weekday) who were trying to sell transport to the main attractions. As it is usual in China, their level of English was mostly nonexistent, they were holding pictures of the places and writing their price on their phones. We decided do give them a pass as in most places using the middle man is the most expensive option. However, it might be a relatively easy way to organize a tour as they have a set route. If you decide to go with one of them - do not forget to haggle for the price.
Passing the exit of the station, in the big square in front of it, there were parked cars waiting to take passengers around - they were not official taxis and none of the drivers spoke any English, but instead of using a tout one can negotiate a route and a price with them directly.
Across the square official taxis were lined on the stand along the main street - using a meter is always the cheapest option, but again one has to explain where to go to the driver. If you have to do that - best is whether to find the address or the attraction name written in Chinese (Google maps or Wikipedia can be useful for this) or show a picture of it.
We decided to go with Didi (a car sharing app) to get to the farthest place and back first - Jiumenkou Great Wall, then use a bus for the attractions within the city.

Didi is the Uber/Grab alternative in China. The upside of Didi is that it is easy to choose a destination as the interface is in English and then driver gets the exact information of where you want to go on his phone. Plus the driver is forced to use a meter because of the app and you get the honest price.

Didi is just one of 12 useful apps to have on your phone when travelling in China.

There was one downside of using it, however - getting back turned out to be harder than expected, as there were no taxis in Didi near the scenic area of Jiumenkou Great Wall and we had to haggle a bit for the return trip.

Jiumenkou Great Wall

It was 30-40 minutes winding drive to the entrance of the scenic area that cost us 39 yuans, the entrance fee for the Wall was 80 yuans and included the Wall, a zoo and a tunnel under the wall that was used to house the local guards.

An unusual feature of this part of the wall is a bridge over a river - one of the few bridges along the Great Wall, rivers were considered to be harder to attack over. The bridge itself is fully restored, along with short sections east and west of it. The whole length of the restored section can be walked in around one hour with some steep parts to the west, but beautiful views of the area from the top. Past the "new" wall, the original crumbling "wild" wall can be seen curving over the nearby hill tops.

The zoo inside the scenic area was nothing more than a few ponds with ducks, not really an attraction except maybe for little children. The sleepy animals seemed undisturbed by the few visitors passing by their cages to get to the more interesting guard tunnel.

The guard tunnel is a 2 m high and around 1 km long tunnel dug through the mountain under the wall. It was used as garrison for the soldiers guarding the wall. Damp and cold it now features exhibits of weapons and torture devices, quite a few rooms and niches used for living quarters, temples and shrines, kitchens, prison cells, toilets. Story boards and figures in traditional clothing in some of the rooms tell historical tales about the building of the wall and the guards living there, unfortunately the English translations of those are impossible to make sense of, Google translate or more probably some Chinese equivalent had not done a good job.

We spent about 2 hours at Jiumenkou Great Wall. When it was time to go back to Shanhaiguan it turned out that there were no taxis nearby in Didi. We were forced to haggle for a ride back with the taxis waiting near the entrance and as there wasn't any other way to go back we had to settle to pay 100 yuans to get to the Old Dragon's Head. Not too expensive, but unpleasant compared to the metered taxi that brought us there.

Old Dragon's Head

The shiny big ticket office in front of the scenic area even had someone who spoke a little English to help us buy the tickets - Old Dragon's Head only was 50 CNY ticket, with several other options available that include entrance to other sites close by.

The site was crowded, not really something unexpected in China. It has a small park and a training camp, which is either restored or completely new, but would be interesting for children mostly. The part of the wall going into the sea was really impressive.

We spend around 1 hour at Old Dragon's Head and after that we headed to the First Pass Under Heaven. Bus 25 that passes near the scenic area frequently got us there for only 2 yuans per person.

First Pass Under Heaven

We got off the bus and walked about 10 minutes to get to the First Pass Under Heaven. Along the way we were approached by someone who claimed that the First Pass Under Heaven was closed, his English was minimal but he had a photo showing a gate with a barrier in front of it to better convey what he was saying and offered to take us to other places instead. Knowing this scam from other places we just politely said "No" and continued on our way. In situations like this, never believe that an attraction is closed, the scammer most probably wants to get you on an expensive "tour" of local shops.

The entrance for this scenic area was 40 yuans and we felt it was too much for what it had to offer, despite its historical importance. There is one gate with a tower, a short section of the wall, a lake and a small park.

We spent around 30 minutes there.

Drum and Bell tower and "Old" town

Exiting the First Pass Under Heaven we were in Shanhaiguan Ancient city - at least, this is what Google maps said. There was a 5 minutes walk to the Drum and Bell tower and another 5-10 minutes tothe west gate of the city.

The "old" town is at most restored, but more probably, a newly built attraction. It has the less than genuine feel of other such Chinese restored places - a lot of cookie-cutter souvenirs and local snacks stores, touristy, but lacking real atmosphere.

Walking around the old town it seemed that we were the biggest attraction with many of the local tourists taking sneaky-not-so-sneaky pictures of us or with us.

It was a 15-20 minutes walk to the train station from there, along the way we found a busy little restaurant and had an early dinner and some rest.

Caught the train at 19:30 - we could have done it for the one at 18:30 even, there wasn't much to do after sunset. Arrived in our apartment back in Beijing late, after a long day full of new experiences.

Date Visited

September 2019

Destinations

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The Shanghai Propaganda Poster Art Center - a red window to the past

2hw — Sun, 29 Sep 2019 03:04:09 +0000

2hw Sun, 09/29/2019 - 06:04

The Propaganda Poster Art Center in Shanghai is a unique opportunity to explore a collection of communist-era art. Depending on your age, political views and where you live seeing the same posters can bring up a wide array of feelings. For the younger generations western people, this might be a fun and colourful illustration of something mentioned in school, for ones who have lived under a communist regime - a sad reminder of difficult times. Maybe, even some people, like the ones who prospered under a red flag (or their descendants), will get a dose of nostalgia for the good old days.

Emotions aside, the facts are clear - this is the only place in the world where some of these posters can be seen, as due to various reasons many posters have been destroyed. It is also the largest collection of such art, holding over 6000 pieces - a small portion of which is displayed, some others are available for purchase at the gift shop.

Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin, Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong

Well advertised in the brochure, but seriously underrepresented is another type of art this museum is dedicated to - the Shanghai Lady Poster, also known as Calendar Poster. Those were more similar to advertisement posters of modern days - featuring beautiful Chinese ladies wearing traditional Shanghai dresses and promoting western goods such as beer, watches and cigarettes. Combining Chinese and Western art styles those posters, produced between 1920 and 1940s (before the communism rule) are a bitter-sweet reminder of a bygone era when Shanghai was described as "the Paris in the Far East". Unfortunately, a very small percentage of the exhibition in the museum is about Lady Posters, I assume the political atmosphere and the long decades are the main causes for destroying most of them.

Shanghai Lady Posters

The museum is not big, 3-4 rooms in a basement, but we spent almost 2 hours there. There is information about each period in English (and most in French too), which makes the visit truly informative and enjoyable, a nice change from many Chinese museums offering texts only in Chinese. A visitor can follow the shifts in the political scene that affected the art by determining what the current issues, visions for the future and enemies are in each period. Drawing styles, materials used and even publishing and distribution techniques are also explained in relation to what was happening at the moment.

Left: Soviet-Chinese friendship - forever!
Right: Protest against US attacks on Vietnam

The displays tell many interesting stories when looking carefully one can spot curious details and nuances. Nothing in those drawings is random, everything has a meaning and this meaning was approved (or enforced) by whatever was the equivalent of "Public Relationships" of the Party back in the days. Here are some of the examples we noticed:

Three different editions of the same poster show identical scenes on the first two, but in the third one person is replaced by his successor. What happened to the original? Nobody knows, but everybody else is still smiling.
The US, UK and rest of the imperialistic enemies are always represented in dark colours, repulsive, small, greedy, rotten, angry, etc.
Chinese people, on the other hand, are always brightly painted, happy, strong, full of energy, often with exaggerated enthusiasm. This applies, of course, to comrades from other countries - the soviet people, Vietnamese, etc.
War-related posters have particularly strong contrasts showing the humongous supremacy of the Chinese army over the enemies. Even Chinese agricultural machinery beats US tanks and bombs.
(Communist) World leaders are a common theme, but position and size of images are important here - posters featuring Mao and Stalin, for example, always have Mao in front.
Feminism - communism may have proved to have faults, but surely it had positive sides like including women in all aspects of life - farming, manual labour, armies, etc.

Left: The mighty H-Bomb (red) will destroy the capitalism
Right: Chinese can fight US tanks and bombs with anything

After exploring the main exhibition head over to the souvenir shop. There you can find some more posters, including ones that are not on display in the museum and everything is for sale - copies of popular posters, pocket-sized books with Mao's teachings, postcards and even framed unique pieces of propaganda art.

Ballet dance: "The Red Detachment of Women" - one of the only 8 performances allowed on stage during the Cultural Revolution

Getting there

The address is 868 Huashan Rd, but finding the PPAC using the maps from their website may be confusing, you can follow our detailed instructions instead. It is actually in the basement of a building inside a residential complex, both entrances of the complex have tiny signs that are very easy to miss.

Catch the metro to Changshu station (Lines 1 and 7) and find exit 8. Go north along Changshu Road, turn left on Changle Road, walk until you get to Huashan Road, the complex (President Mansion) is on the opposite side of the intersection. There is a side entrance there (Google Maps), there might be a barrier, but pedestrians can walk around it, the building is 20 meters ahead, labelled Building B (also Building 4). Follow the signs to the basement level.

There is a main entrance here (Google Maps), which looks bigger, but leads to other buildings and to get to the museum in Building B you have to go through the backyard to find it.

The entrance fee is 25 yuan.

Open Tuesday to Sunday between 10:00 and 17:00 closed on Mondays.

Date Visited

September 2019

Destinations

Gallery

Birth control was promoted to "support the Revolution"

Left: It's clear who wins | Right: an actual photo showing the life in the USA

Left: Proletarian rebels | Right: bright future

Every kid should know who the enemies are

US soldiers defeated by kids

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A walk through the ancient Roman city of Volubilis in Morocco

2hw — Fri, 26 Jul 2019 09:37:15 +0000

2hw Fri, 07/26/2019 - 12:37

On our way from Fes to Chefchaouen we had two important stops - Meknes and Volubilis. After Meknes failed to impress, we were glad we left early in the morning and had a lot of time to explore the ancient roman city. Several hours or even half a day can easily be spent there, if you are impatient to know why - watch our video.

https://youtu.be/SKo-4zLYqFU

The city has a long and dynamic history, here I'm not going to go into details, but highlight some of the main points. There are signs of even earlier civilizations, but solid evidence confirms Volubilis was a Carthaginian village from the 3rd century BC until 146 BC when Rome took it over. Several turbulent centuries followed, when locals and the roman invaders fought for control of the city, until 44 AD. With Rome focusing efforts on negotiation peace and prosperity followed - olive oil and grains were exported to the capital and money flowed back to the one of the most remote cities in the empire. Most of the impressive buildings still standing today were built during this golden age - mansions, shops, temples similar to those in the rest of the huge empire. Near the end of the third century Rome had so many wars to fight that when Volubilis was lost they never came back to reclaim it. The numerous other ethnic groups that inhabited the city remained for a lot longer, at first under Christian control, then in the seventh century Arabs moved to this area and the Islamic period of the city began. None of those, however, could match the prosperity under Rome's rule - the city slowly began to fade, until it was completely deserted in the 14th century.

Despite the wrath of the elements, several earthquakes and some Morrocan rulers using the cut stones for buildings in Meknes, what is still left is amazing in both quantity and quality. Most of the excavation work was done by the French in the first half of the 20th century, and after the wars works continued by united French-Moroccan efforts. Other countries joined the restoration efforts and formal recognition of the importance of the site was given by UNESCO listing Volubilis as a part of the World Heritage in 1997. Nowadays only minor restoration is being done, there are no current plans for further excavation, which is both sad and confusing considering only half of what is officially documented to be Volubilis is restored. What other secrets are hiding beneath the nearby hills is something probably the next generations will discover.

Getting close one can easily see why the area attracted so many different civilizations throughout the centuries - rich, fertile agricultural land that is still covered in wheat crops, olive and almond tree plantations. Some of the main buildings can be seen even before entering the enormous complex, so excitement levels rise early. Right after the entrance there is a small museum with both indoor and outdoor exhibits. Inside, well presented displays tell the story of the place and also give insight into culture, religion, economy and other aspects of the daily life, outside are some of the best preserved inscriptions from various ages. It is a good idea to explore the museum first and then the city, but due to darkening clouds we left it for last and went straight to the ruins before the coming rain.

I will talk about the most notable buildings very soon, but want to start with the smaller, middle-class neighborhoods we explored right after going in. The houses are so well preserved, that with just a little imagination one can go back in time and walk the lively alleys, go trough the open doors and almost see the people going about their daily lives. Fire pits, windows and door hinges complete the picture with vivid details.

A fully reconstructed olive press shows how the main export of the region - olive oil - was produced. There were numerous buildings like this one, probably close to a hundred, with 58 discovered so far, each equipped with a mill for crushing the olives and sets of presses and filtration systems to extract the precious liquid.

Widening streets lead towards the center of the city, bigger houses with more details begin to emerge. Amazing feature of Volubilis are the restored in their original place mosaics in many of the houses. These pictures made of tiny stones have even given the names of many of the buildings - House of Orpheus holds a mosaic depicting the god playing a harp to some forest creatures, House of the Athlete has a funny mosaic of a probably drunk acrobat riding a donkey back to front, holding a cup in his hand, and so on.

Mosaic from the House of the Acrobat

Three buildings in the center rise above all, a basilica, the Capitoline Temple and the Triumphal arch - well preserved and restored now they provide the best photo opportunities, but in Roman times things were a bit different. The tall columns lined basilica was the main administrative building, where magistrates decided the fate of the city.

The Basilica

Next to it, the major temple of the city dedicated to the trio of Jupiter, Juno and Minerva. Must have been a great sight back in the days, with people climbing the high steps to pay their respects to the gods, pray for health, bountiful crops or success in upcoming battles. There were other smaller temples in the city, but the Romans had another reason to build a huge and magnificent temple in addition to providing a proper place of worship - with literally dozens of other religious, ethnic and cultural groups living in the city, including Berbers, Nomads, Africans, Syrians, Spaniards, Greeks, and Jews, who had to be reminded who is in charge.

Square with a big altar between the temple and the basilica

The Capitoline temple

When discovered, The Arch of Caracalla had enough pieces of the inscriptions scattered nearby to reveal it's own history. The arch was built to honor emperor Caracalla and his mother, a sad twist in the story is they were both killed before the project was completed. This beautiful marble structure was even more impressive than what we see today - richly decorated with statues of nymphs and bronze chariots on top of it.

The Arch of Caracalla

The Triumphal arch marks the end of Decumanus Maximus - the main street of the city starting at the main city gate - The Tingis Gate. Both ends give great views of the ruins. This wide and almost straight road is lined with the most prestigious villas and shops, be sure to save enough energy to wander a bit in each of them, as some stunning details can be discovered there.

Decamanus Maximus - view from the center of the city

One of the large mansions

House of Venus

A slight disappointment from a photographers perspective in Volubilis is the aqueduct - it is underground. From a technological point of view the city was very advanced for its time, the aqueduct connects a nearby spring to the city, a well developed network provided fresh water to houses, baths and fountains. The aqueduct itself was under the Decumanus Secundus (parallel to Decumanus Maximus), and terminated at a large fountain in the city center, which is still visible today. Two thousand years ago Volubilis had so much that some towns do not have even now - in addition to providing clean water to practically every citizen, there was a second network of pipes for sewage, draining all used water from the city to a nearby river.

The aqueduct

We have explored numerous other Roman remains in Europe, but Volubilis definitely impressed us with both grand constructions and small, intricate details.

Date Visited

October 2018

Gallery

House of the Wild Animals

Baths

House door

View of the city

Mosaic depicting the 12 labors of Hercules

Baths

The Tingis Gate

House of Venus

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The Drug Elimination Museum in Yangon

2hw — Sun, 25 Mar 2018 06:54:36 +0000

2hw Sun, 03/25/2018 - 09:54

Unless you have strong interest in drugs this museum will not be on your two-day itinerary in Yangon. But if you are lucky enough to have more time in this interesting city I would recommend this unusual way to spend a couple hours. The three-storey building contains a lot of information and at some point of time must have been a great, modern museum.

The first floor is where one can learn how drugs entered Myanmar, which countries are the main producers of drugs, main transport routes worldwide and my personal favorite - the stories behind the Opium Wars, which are presented with scenes, detailed history about the events and some side panels about particular people involved.

A very confusing attempt at interactive display was a small corridor named "Drugs ruin lives" - a bunch of plastic dudes at a boring party the way I understood it. At the end there is a scene that shows dead bodies and a monster hand reaching at you, probably a way to send a simple and strong message for the kids.

Drugs ruin lives

If you have more time you can learn in details about some operations in Myanmar that caught numerous criminals and led to the destruction of industrial amounts of heroin, marijuana, ecstasy and so on. To get an idea of the scale of the problem think about this - at some point they had over 50 planes spreading herbicides to destroy poppy fields. From the way things are presented I got the feeling that the war on drugs is over in Myanmar, however in reality I'm not sure that is the case.

Left: Seizure of 118.4 kg heroin, Yangon, 2009 | Right: Seizure of 592.7 kg heroin, Ye township, 2004

The exhibits on the upper floors are all about recovery - from dioramas of drug rehabilitation centres and various activities to help addicts to how the government helped farmers switch from poppy and cannabis to rice and vegetables. Be careful on the top floor, there are holes in the ceiling and pigeons live above. Yes, there are bird droppings in piles, we also saw a dead pigeon in one of the exhibits.

Dangers of drugs

In the morning the museum was almost empty, I noticed a father with his young daughter paying special attention to the dangers of drugs. Later a group of local teenagers came in with the main goal to snap some selfies with the marijuana leaves on display.

Location: Drug Elimination Museum in Yangon

Entry fee: 4000 Kyats (US$ 3) per person, 6000 Kyats (US$ 5) for camera

Open: 9:00 - 16:00 Tuesday - Sunday, except public holidays

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Gallery

Opium wars

Destruction of seized drugs

Life without drugs

Where pigeons come from

Giant poppy

museums

Shanhaiguan and Old Dragon's Head - the start of the Great Wall

Shanhaiguan and Old Dragon's Head - the start of the Great Wall

How to get there

Our day

Jiumenkou Great Wall

Old Dragon's Head

First Pass Under Heaven

Drum and Bell tower and "Old" town

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The Shanghai Propaganda Poster Art Center - a red window to the past

The Shanghai Propaganda Poster Art Center - a red window to the past

Getting there

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A walk through the ancient Roman city of Volubilis in Morocco

A walk through the ancient Roman city of Volubilis in Morocco

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The Drug Elimination Museum in Yangon

The Drug Elimination Museum in Yangon

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