Day 17 - Friday, Nov. 1 - Beijing to Xian

Xian, view from the city walls

Up at 5 for a quick breakfast and a bus ride to the airport.  At the other end, my suitcase - which disappeared from in front of my hotel room door during the night - re-appears.  Then disappears again because Stanley will be handling luggage to our hotel.

       He leaves us in the able - though quieter - hands of Amber, who’s been a guide for 20 years and lives in Xian, so has local knowledge.  Our driver Mr. Jing steers us from Xianyang Airport, which services several cities, into Xian (pronounce shee-ang) through traffic less hectic than Beijing’s but still congested in places.  And unlike Beijing, where only a lottery allows people to have a car and few are chosen, here the government promoted car ownership by cutting the tax on cars from 10% to 5%.  But of course the population in Beijing is 28 million and here it’s only just under 10 million.
       We drive past never-ending projects of about 30-floor residential towers.  Where do all these people work?  I see one power plant (coal-fired, Amber tells me) with four cooling towers; Amber says there are two more plants in the area.  We cross a wide river bed, almost dry: the Weihe, a tributary of the Huang He (Yellow River), the second longest river in China after the Yangtze.  We’re farther west than Beijing here, but China has a “one-time-zone” policy (that of the capital), so the sun comes up at the equivalent of 7 a.m. here, but it’s still 5:30 on the clock, as it would be in Beijing.  We’re also farther south (34°N compared to 40°), so the climate is more like southern California as opposed to northern.
       Amber explains that Xian was the capital of China (as Kyoto once was of Japan) for 13 dynasties and over 1,000 years - from 200 B.C. to 907 A.D.  It’s famous for its rich culture, and the people are very proud.  It’s the only place in China that still has its complete wall around the city - a moat, a park and a wall which you can walk or bike on.  The wall was built by the Mings 600 years ago, but some parts are up to 1,000 years old.  (On a more modern note, the city is greatly expanding its subway (30 meters underground), which is causing archaeological headaches.)
       The city has a huge Muslim population of 200,000, with its own neighborhood.  After all, Xian means “western peace” (xi = west, an = peace).  We’ll visit it later.  But before that, it’s off to the museum and archaeological treasures we can touch, with the white gloves they give us.  (No cameras allowed in the room.)

       First they bring out a ritual wine decanter and wine “cup” from the Zhou Dynasty.  The decanter is highly engraved; both are oxidized.  In addition to its three legs, the cup has two posts sticking up, in addition to its handles; it’s thought they may have served to keep the drinkers’ long beards out of the wine.  Amazingly ancient, from a world we can only imagine.
      Then they bring out more modern objects... only 1,300 years old, from the Tang Dynasty.  A heavy bronze mirror with carvings on one side and smooth on the other to reflect your image.  After that a delicate silver plate that still has some shine from its original gold plating; the engraving is of two fish swimming among lotus flowers, which shows a Buddhist influence.  It’s in such good condition because it was found in a sealed jar, so no oxidation damaged it.  That’s followed by a heavy silver braided chain with a dragon head at either end, used as a lock for some cabinet; the dragons are copper with silver plating... and identical, which means they were molded or cast, not carved.
       And the treasures keep on coming.  A lovely flower-shaped cup with eight petals; on four are depicted a hunting scene, on the other four a scene with courtiers.  It too is silver with gold plating, obviously belonging to the royal family.  It was found in mud at the bottom of the palace’s lake, which preserved it.  The lake is gone, but the cup survived.  Next is a strange rectangular clay box, closed but hollow, that they say doctors of the era used to take a pulse by having the patient place a hand on it... though how they know that I can’t imagine.
       Another clay object, this one a small statue of a lion with green glaze (copper) on the head, brownish yellow glaze (iron) on the body and a white tail.  It was meant to be placed in a tomb, and as at that time there were no lions in China, it indicates trade along the Silk Road, perhaps with Persia.
       The last piece is also Tang Dynasty:  a marble Buddha head from the palace area, minus the rest of Buddha.  But before that, the next to last piece is from the Han Dynasty (2,000 years old) and it's the most spectacular:  a large jeweler’s box that held eight “coins”, cakes of 97% pure gold weighed out to a precise 250 grams (half a pound).  If it was a bit over, the correct amount was chipped off; if a bit under, the necessary quantity was added.  The coins gleam in the light, stand out against the red velvet and feel heavy in the hand.  290 of these coins were found by accident in the mud of an old brick-making factory.  Why were they there?
       The curator’s gift to us is the white gloves we’ve used to handle these amazing ancient objects.  Thanking them for the honor and the gift, we take the bus to the Muslim neighborhood.

The Muslim district

From the near silence of antiquities to the noise and lights of the oldest Muslim quarter in China, with its bazaar, hawkers and merchants calling out to us to buy their goods:  souvenirs of course, but food mostly:  fruit pressed into juice, millet cakes dipped in honey...  Amber buys some persimmon dough-cakes for us, and they’re delicious!

The Mosque

       Our destination:  the mosque at its center.  It’s only for male worshipers; women pray elsewhere.  A series of small gardens with gazebos lead to the prayer pagoda, decidedly of Chinese flair and not Arab... even the minaret.  As with other Muslim architecture, no humans or animals are depicted, except for the dragon (because it’s fictional?).  The mosque dates back to the Tang Dynasty but was enlarged under the Mings.  We cannot enter the inner sanctum, but as it has an open architecture, I see a few men praying inside.  I notice they’re facing west, not east as I’m used to in Europe and the U.S.  Mecca lies west of China, a geographical anomaly for me, just as the sun moving east to north to west was in Hiva Oa.
       We walk back through the bazaar for a delicious dumpling dinner with all the trimmings.  On our way, we pass the two early 14th century towers, now lit up in the dark:  the Bell Tower, whose bells used to signal the city gates opening in the morning, and the Drum Tower, which signaled the gates closing at night.
       Filled with dumplings, we return to our sumptuous rooms at the Sofitel and a sound night’s sleep.  Tomorrow:  the terra cotta warriors!

Day 16 - Thursday, Oct. 31 - Hallowe’en in Beijing

Tienanmen Square, with 70th anniversary sculpture on left

Qilin Column and Forbidden City

Onto the bus at 8:00, our driver again defies Beijing rush hour.  First stop:  Tienanmen Square.

       The square is by the old city walls, which are gone now; only two towers remain.  There was no square here until the 1950's (the Russian period) when buildings were razed to make a Lenin-like Red Square.  Located on it are the National Museum and the tomb of Mao, who wasn’t cremated like all ordinary city residents are.  No room for cemeteries!  The name Tienanmen means “the blessed gate of peace”.  It’s rife with slogans:  “Long live the Chinese people”, “Long live world unity”...  There’s also a flower sculpture remaining from the October 1st ceremony of the Chinese government’s 70th anniversary of existence.  And a column with the Chinese dragon-esque monster, the qilin,  a mythical hooved chimerical creature with one-horn (based on the giraffe first seen when Chinese ships pushed as far as Africa in the Middle Ages).  Plus a memorial to the people’s heroes.  What there is not is any trace of the man standing up to the tank.

Emperor's Palace, Forbidden Palace

We go through a gate, and under the portrait of Mao, into the Forbidden City.  Constructed from 1406 to 1420, it will celebrate its 600th anniversary next year.  This is where the Ming emperors lived and worked.  Stanley walks us in through the ceremonial south gate, the middle of the five gates, which only the emperor had the right to use... and the empress, but only on the day of her wedding.  Underfoot are 17 layers of brick intended to prevent anyone from tunneling in.

       One by one, we penetrate the compounds leading to the inner sanctum of the emperor’s palace, one inside the other like a Russian matruschka doll.  The first is the Hall of Supreme Harmony.  On either side are symbolic (?!) treasure houses.

       Ornamentation is everywhere.  Colorful painting to decorate the beams of walkways.  Animals on the corners of roofs; the more animals, the higher ranking the occupant.

       Then come the twelve palaces of the imperial concubines, served by eunuchs castrated almost at birth.  (What a life choice for your child!)  Then it’s the emperor’s compound, where poor Puyi, the last of the emperors, spent his entire life - as emperor, as prisoner of the Japanese, and even after there were no emperors any more.  He had a beautiful garden in this prison, with a koi pond and peonies and 300-year-old pine and cypress trees.

       Then it’s out by the north gate, which leads to a man-made hill with five Buddhist shrines, and off to lunch.  In addition to a turntable of dishes from different provinces, we’re served a “beggar’s chicken” cooked in a clay cast which one of us has to crack open with a mallet.

The afternoon starts with a bicycle-powered rickshaw ride through what little remains of the old city: the hutong.  Our ride through the narrow streets is cut short when a worker emptying the public toilets blocks traffic (and stinks up the air), so we have to retrace our path.

       The ride is followed by a visit to the home of a couple who is the fourth generation to live there - 160 years - and they, in turn, will pass it on to their daughter.  The lady of the house worked in a map-making plant, which smartphones have run out of business.  Her husband is an artist and I let myself be tempted by a blossoming plum tree sketch on rice paper that I’ll now have to carry for the rest of the trip.  Their small house has two areas - one for sleeping, one for living, separated by a curtain - plus a tiny kitchen... and its own minuscule bathroom!  It reminds me of the home I visited in Cuba.

Temple of Heaven

       The last stop of the day is to the Temple of Heaven.  To reach it, you walk through a public park where people are playing cards and a Chinese game called xiangji, or Chinese chess (see photo below).  Sometimes they even add some money to make it more interesting, even though that’s not allowed, and the guard doesn’t seem to mind.

       We can only look into the temple but its colors glow in the setting sun.  Here people traditionally prayed for a good harvest at the spring equinox, and at the winter solstice for a happy year with no locusts or other plagues.

       The two other buildings are rather dry explanations of all Stanley has already explained, except for a cross-section model of the temple and how it was built.  So it’s back to the bus and slow progress through rush-hour traffic again.

       We have to repack and leave our suitcases outside our hotel rooms for collection.  We won’t see them again until tomorrow night at the Sofitel Hotel in Xian.

       Hopefully!

Day 15 - Wednesday, Oct. 30 - Great Wall

Today is the Great Wall, one of the things I’ve wanted to see all my life.  One of my own personal Wonders of the World.  And the reason - along with the Terracotta Warriors - that I’ve come to China.  That and pandas.
       While eating breakfast this morning, an article in the China Daily newspaper announced a national ban on eating and drinking in the subway.  To be applied April 1st (no fooling!).  It also bans playing music or videos in public.  Thirty-five Chinese cities have subways, for a total of 5,295 kilometers (with 370 more km to be built), including 678 km in Beijing, to handle 13.7 million trips a day.  They’re also installing facial recognition equipment, “to improve transport efficiency”.  (Right!)

After breakfast, there’s a tai chi class in the garden.  Then we pile on the bus for a three-hour ride to the Jinshanling portion of the Great Wall.  It’s on the border of Beijing Province, in the Golden Mountain Range.  Our driver, Mr. Yang, navigates the perplexing ins and outs of Beijing’s five ring roads and the aggressiveness of its drivers.  The city itself is largely just residences and businesses, with industry centers west of the city.
       Beijing lies in a plain draining several rivers that run northeast to southwest out of the mountains to its north and west.  Some mountains are basalt, most are granite, limestone and gneiss, all very old so highly eroded.  Summers in Beijing are hot and steamy (thus the Summer Palace I saw yesterday), winters Siberian.  As the road climbs, we leave the pollution visible today behind us, but still accompanied by the red banners with white lettering that extol the Chinese to be better people or praise the government.  We cross arid countryside, with terracing to help prevent erosion.
       Stanley gives us a bit of history en route.  Beijing is 3,000 years old and has had various names, the present of which means north (bei) capital (jing).  Peking is how the European missionaries heard it.  Both the Mongols and then the Manchurians conquered Beijing - and China - but the Manchurians adopted Chinese culture instead of imposing their own.  Stanley also mentions the Silk Road, which flourished for over 2,000 years.  That trade route, including for highly lucrative silk goods, connected China - and the rest of East Asia and Southeast Asia - with South Asia, Persia, the Arabian Peninsula, East Africa and Southern Europe.  The Great Wall played an important part in the protection of that route.

The Great Wall itself is 21,000 miles long, running east to west, rising out of the ocean and disappearing into the Gobi Desert.  It would cross the entire United States.  Built in 221 B.C. by China’s first centralized government, it took only ten years to complete, according to Stanley.  Its purpose was to protect from the Huns occupying Mongolia.  (The part we will visit was reconstructed in the Ming Dynasty.)  The labor force was made up of slaves and criminals, soldiers, and peasants working as payment of their taxes (feudal system).  First they laid a solid stone base.  Then they mixed sand, clay and straw - held together by sticky rice water - to build layers of earthen wall.  That was then covered with stone and brick on the outside and paved on top with stone and brick.

       Towers spaced along the top provided housing for soldiers and storage for the goods supplied by roads leading up to the wall.  Soldiers’ families were given land so they could be nearby.  There were nine subsections in all, with a general for each three sections.

       The Great Wall also served as a road and a signal system.  There were large beacon towers to warn of attacks: fires by night, smoke by day...  The same system France’s Rhone Valley used to warn of Viking incursions sailing up from the Mediterranean.

       South of the wall laid farmland, albeit arid; north was just grassland.

       But the whole system failed when one sentinel, unhappy - like all Chinese then - with the emperor, and more particularly with his concubine having been taken for the Emperor’s use, simply opened one gate and let the enemy in.

Knowing all this, we begin our ascent.  From the start I acquire a mascot, a tiny lady whose age is hard to guess.  45?  55?  She accompanies me throughout, her bag of books, fans and T-shirts over her shoulder.  I end up buying two wonderful books of photos for 300 yuan... about $40.  What it probably would have cost in a bookshop... but the bookshop wouldn’t have climbed all those stairs.  I’m sure that money is a lot for her.

       A surprise at the top:  one of the towers has been set up for our lunch.  Didn’t think the announced “lunch at the Wall” would mean this!  Someone has schlepped all the way up those steps carrying food, drinks (including champagne), chafing dishes, tables, chairs, white tablecloths and napkins, chinaware, glassware, cutlery, vases of white roses... and then sprinkled red and white rose petals all over the floor.  Talk about special!

       We’re given time to explore and I decide to climb up to one of the watchtowers on a crest.  It also has a storehouse looming over a precipice.  (A family is having lunch there, but something far less ritzy than ours.)  The view goes on for miles and miles, with the wall winding on the crest as far as the eye can see.  However did they build this?!  And in such a short period of time!  Amazing!!

       We climb back down, me still with my mascot, even though she’s already clinched the deal and collected her money.  She even insists on carrying the books down for me and is very concerned I don’t fall.  I tell her good-bye and could almost kiss her.  She was the nicest of all her “colleagues”.

       The bus ride back is uneventful, but the police are stopping some cars.  Stanley explains that if you’re not registered in Beijing, you can’t just drive in; you have to have obtained an authorization.  It’s to keep out the “dangerous people”, Stanley tells me.  (You also can’t drive in Beijing on all days, just some, depending on your license number.  And yet the traffic jams...!)

       I’m not hungry.  Just tired.  And we have another big day tomorrow.  So to bed!

(As an addendum, this article on the Great Wall from National Geographic:  https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/magazine/2016/03-04/the-great-wall-of-china/)

Day 14 - Tuesday, Oct. 29 - Beijing

Daybreak from my Beijing hotel window

Up early and down to a sumptuous breakfast.  Choices galore.  There’s an advantage to not speaking the language:  you don’t get distracted by conversations.
       Waiting for the guide, I explore my room and find a “running map” of the area for joggers - they think of everything! - which confirms what I suspected as we approached the hotel last night, driving past big “homes” with walls and guards:  this is the embassy district right by Ritan Park, which is book-ended by the British Embassy and the Residence of the U.S. Embassy.  This district also includes the embassies of Poland, Colombia, Finland, Sri Lanka, Egypt, Singapore, Bulgaria, Ireland, Cuba, the Czech Republic, the Slovak Republic and the Philippines.
       A bit before 9, my guide Ling Yun - aka Garry - arrives.  He informs me that the zipline off the Great Wall and across a river valley is no longer in operation, thereby rescuing me from a glorious demise.  (Evidently it was owned by two people, one Chinese and one foreign, and the foreigner pulled out.)  Instead we will see two things not on the National Geographic tour that starts tomorrow.
       We'll start with the Ming Tombs north of Beijing, in the Swallow Mountains.  Traffic is heavy in this city of 20 million plus.  (Shanghai is bigger at 25 million and Chungking is the biggest at 34 million.)  And yet to buy a car you have to win a lottery with names picked randomly by the government; only one in 2,570 applicants wins.
       As we drive, we pass a pagoda.  I ask what religion it is and Garry says it’s not a pagoda, it's a mosque!  But there’s another one, more traditional-looking, in Beijing... complete with a minaret.

Ming Tombs

About an hour later, we arrive at the tombs.  The Ming Dynasty lasted almost 300 years, from 1368 to 1644, and the first of the thirteen tombs here was that of Emperor Changling.  He chose this spot for its good fengshui:  water in front (a river now dammed upstream), hills behind.  Changling is the emperor who moved the capital from Nanking to Beijing and built the Forbidden City.  Its colors are red for happiness and yellow, a color only the emperor could use.

        After a giant turtle monument, which represents long life in China, we walk the Sacred Way, mostly straight but curved a bit at one point to fool the evil spirits, who apparently move only in straight lines and also can’t pass thresholds.  (A threshold is what caused China’s very last emperor to fall; he had them all removed so he could ride his bike indoors... and the evil spirits got him.)  Along the path are pairs of animals, first seated, then standing - lions, elephants, camels - and then pairs of warriors and courtiers.
       We climb the pagoda from where we can see some of the other tombs in the distance.  This is a sort of Chinese Valley of the Kings.  There are many dragon symbols here and Garry explains that the royal dragon has five toes while the commoner‘s has only three.  (It’ll be on the quiz.)
       Signs here are also in English - not the case in the city.  I particularly enjoy the one of a cigarette lighter with a diagonal red line through it that says “prohibition of fire”, but I was perplexed by the one that said “cellphone prohibit during thunderstorms”.  And I especially like the admonishment that “fighting, gambling, superstitious or erotic activities are strictly forbidden”.

Under a lovely crisp autumn sun, we head back toward Beijing to the Summer Palace, which dates from the Qin Dynasty.  The emperor built it to get some cool air in summer, something the Forbidden City has little of.  It lies on the shores of turtle-shaped Kunming Lake, which was created from nothing and the earth removed used to build Longevity Hill behind the residence.  (Remember the Ming Tombs fengshui?)  The hill is shaped like a bat, whose name in Chinese has a sound like that of the word for happiness; the bat shape is found elsewhere also.

The marble boat

       The lake is beautiful in the sunlight.  Garry tells me he used to swim here as a child, but now that’s forbidden.  There are paddleboats here though, many being used, and then there’s the big Marble Boat at the end of our walk.  Its hull is made of real white marble but the rest is wood painted to look like marble.
       As our driver takes us back to the hotel, Garry tells me a bit about his family.  His parents, now retired, were journalists.  In 1968, when he was two, they were sent to separate camps out in the country for re-education.  He went with his mother.  They were “lucky”; their banishment lasted only three years.  No wonder he worked so hard in school, learning excellent English.  As I say good-bye at the hotel, I wish him well.  I’ve given him my card so he can send me a copy of the photo he took of us.  Maybe we’ll stay in touch.

This evening there’s a reception for all my fellow travelers.  (I arrived one day early, for the zipline.)  I thank Stanley for finding me Garry.  Then Stanley gives a presentation, with do’s and don’ts.  Our expert, geography professor Alec Murphy, gives a bit of an introduction and hands out a chart (with map) for the various dynasties.  Very helpful.
       Then it’s off to shower and bed.  Tomorrow, the Great Wall!

The Summer Palace

Day 13 - Monday, Oct. 28 - Kyoto to Osaka to Beijing

After a long night’s sleep, broken often by all the tea I drank with the kaiseki lunch, I awake to a cloudless blue sky.  I make myself a cup of tea to go with the pastries I subterfuged from breakfast yesterday, then lavish myself by reading in bed, a luxury in prevision of the train to the plane to China.

Impressions of Japan:  Funny to see my Prius all over in the streets here.  Lots of Starbucks... and 7/11s and even a Domino’s Pizza have colonized Kyoto.  For business locally, there’s Boeing and Nintendo, plus sake-making due to the local spring water.  So many kimonos (mostly tourists).  Haven’t seen many gas stations.  And I’ve seen not a single animal except one small dog on a leash in a T-shirt; not even pigeons, not even in the train stations.  For a country that went to war under an emperor, occupied Manchuria and Korea, and flew hundreds of fighter planes halfway across the Pacific to bomb Pearl Harbor, I see few if any flags flying.  Hard to find one small one for my prayer flags.
       I’ll miss being understood - at least a bit - by most everyone (sales clerks, cab drivers...).  Most people I’ve met speak some English.  And I make the others laugh with my mimics.  I’ll miss the soft, warm bathrobe in my room.  I won’t miss those simpering child-woman voices in the elevators.  I definitely won’t miss face masks; they make me feel like I should scrub in for surgery.  Besides, what good does it do if you just have it over your mouth and not your nose?  (One trendy girl at the airport wears a black one!)
       I’ve come to Japan at the same time as a mild typhoon (which broke up off of Tokyo and didn’t make Kyoto), as the rugby world final in Yokohama (England will play South Africa next week-end; any bets on the winner?) and as the coronation of the 126th emperor, Naruhito.  A very busy time!

Walk to the train station in plenty of time for the Haruka Limited Express to Kansai Airport outside Osaka.  I see the train before mine leave, all decorated with flowers and Hello Kitty images.  Actually that’s its name:  the Hello Kitty Haruka.  And when it arrives, my train has rhe same decoration; inside and out, right down to the headrests, it's all Hello Kitty.  It’s at the platform half an hour before departure but, as in Tokyo, has to be cleaned, with a sign at the door of the car that says “We are sorry.  Please do not enter while cleaning”.  How very polite!
       After we can board, a group of four comes in and the gentleman swivels his two-seat row so it's facing the others.  I saw the cleaners do that in Tokyo so that all seats faced “forward”, but I didn’t know just anybody could do it!

The rivers we cross (including in Kyoto) have steep banks and a much wider bed than the actual water in it.  That may be wise as there have been nineteen typhoons this season, and record rain.  As there are hills all around in the hinterland, I can only assume there’s a lot of snowmelt sometimes as well.
       Housing, both old and new, comes right up to the railroad tracks.  Can’t be very restful.  And it’s certainly not a picturesque view.   Japanese houses and apartments seem small.  (Tahiti and Hiva Oa also have small homes but people always seem to be outside, so little room is needed.)  Do the Japanese entertain at home?  All apartment buildings seem to have an outside stairway, maybe because of earthquakes?  And yet there are many highways and train lines running on high stilts.
       Near the airport there are lots of homes with truck gardens, surrounded by industry.  A strange mix.
       Then, after a long bridge, we reach Kansai Airport.  Must have been built on landfill.  There I manage to find a small Japanese flag, but one that the shop is using for decoration.  After a bit of coaxing, they relent and sell it to me.  Searching shops for it has taken up the time until check-in (as did the long line!).  And the wait to board turns out to be a lot of time because there’s an air controller problem somewhere in China!  (Isn’t that forbidden?)  We leave over a half-hour late for the almost four-hour flight.  As far as I can tell, I’m the only non-Asian on the plane.  And, upon arrival, I'll be one of a literal handful of people in the “foreign” line at passport control.
       The ground crew on the tarmac waves our plane good-bye.  Got to love the Japanese!  Finally, we head into the sun, going west, which seems strange because China is The Far East to Americans and Europeans.  We fly over a long bridge, oyster beds, then nothing.  The late sun turns the China Sea a fiery gold.  Then Japan disappears beneath the clouds.  I leave the Land of the Rising Sun, headed for the Middle Kingdom.

When we land in Beijing, it’s a totally different world.  Immediately.  The Japanese took their time; the Chinese mob the aisle to disembark.  Then they cram onto the bus and don’t line up for the escalator (just like the French).  And then there’s the man with his pant leg pulled up, furiously scratching his calf as if he has fleas.
       But nothing looks more like one airport than another airport, even if there’s less signage in English here.  One huge difference is the x-ray scan of your luggage after baggage claim!  China is the only country I know of that does that.  I’m glad I hid my camera in my backpack; walking around the airport with it around my neck might have raised suspicions among the many police and military in the hallways... a fact the National Geographic man, Stanley Wen, agrees with when I reach the hotel.  (An airport young man with a National Geographic sign escorted me to the big car sent out to fetch me... no stubby Hondas here as in Kyoto.)
      Stanley goes over the schedule with me in the plush hotel lobby.  (Is this really Communist China, this opulent capitalistic luxury?)  He tries to find out whether or not the zipline near the Great Wall still exists, but can’t.  I’ll find out tomorrow morning when the guide arrives at 9.  We say goodnight, the bellboy takes me to my posh room - into which five of my Japanese rooms would fit - and I slip between the sheets after a shower.
       It’s been quite a travel day!