Travel: China

Friends of mine have just returned from a 10-day trip to China from Toronto.  They were totally enthralled with China and the Chinese.  After I get their permission, I will post a few pics from their trip.  In the meantime, here's some info on China that my friends have sent around  from their travel notebooks, so we get an idea of the country they visited.

People’s Republic of China
Population 1.4 billion
22 provinces + Taiwan + 4 municipalities
600 million low-income farmers
230 million migrant workers

More than 30 million below “poverty line” with no electricity
70 million members of Communist Party

Beijing  
Means “northern capital”
17 million
3,000 years old
Capital city for 800 years
Several former names for city
6 expressways circle the city
Thousands of tall apartment buildings

Forbidden City – built 1406, 980 buildings with 8,707 rooms, 720,000 sq meters
Marco Polo visited Beijing some 200 years before Forbidden City was built.
Was the palace for 24 successive emperors of Ming and Qing Dynasties, each had an empress and 3,000 concubines
Temperature below freezing, open water frozen, some snow remnants
Overcast – pollution?

Hutong residential area of Beijing – typical old style houses with a maze of narrow streets.
Great Wall – 1 million workers died in construction, buried in wall.
Very steep steps

Nanjing
Means “southern capital”
7 million

Yangtze River bridge – 1.5 km wide - bi level – railway on lower, highway on top.
300 km up river from sea
2 river tunnels under construction for completion in 2011.

Buildings and homes in China north of Yangtze River are heated but south are unheated
World’s longest city wall built by 200,000 men
Wuxi
Pronounced Wu-See
population 4 million
Grand Park hotel – the best
Suzhou
Pronounced Su –Joe
population 6 million
Holiday Inn – excellent
8,000 factories of foreign companies

Shanghai
pop 21 million
2,400 sq miles
More than 6,000 tall buildings

3 rivers through city: Huangpu R, Yangtze R, Suzhou Creek.
6 river tunnels, 7 river bridges, 3 subway lines
New Shanghai-Beijing railway to open 2011 – 380 km/hr - will reduce travel time from 10 hours to 5 hours.

Maglev train from city to airport - 30 km – max of 431 km/hr for 50 seconds – service started 2004