By Larry and Joan Dolinski
We also visited a TATAMI SHOP (Tatami is a long lasting floor covering made of rice straw), a GREEN TEA CONTAINER SHOP (7th family generation) located in the cellar of a home, and the NINTENDO PLAYING CARD COMPANY (dating to 1886).
As we walked through Kyoto our guide pointed out some of the wide, handsome avenues and told us that prewar Japan had no such thoroughfares. He explained that all of these were built from firebreaks that the Japanese themselves created by deliberately destroying swatches of buildings to counter the conflagrations resulting from the fire bombings of the Second World War.
We spent a pleasant layover day in Amanohashidate, a seaside village with a resort flavor. That day happened to be a National Sports Holiday and it featured thousands of middle-aged and older people doing organized 15 (or 30) kilometer walks. They came right by our campground. Many of us walked part of their route, which took us several kilometers over a narrow strip of land across a harbor to a village on the opposite shore. There we ascended to the top of a mountain to a spot where the custom is to stand with one's back to the harbor and far off mountains, then bend over and look back between the legs. In this posture one sees the "path to heaven"...so they say.
In our very brief time in Hiroshima we made a return visit to the Peace Memorial, the "A-Bomb building (the only building exhibiting A-Bomb damage deliberately left in damaged condition as a memorial), and the A-Bomb hypocenter (a.k.a. Ground Zero). At the Peace Memorial we viewed a very poignant film entitled "Hiroshima, A Mother's Prayer" which, as one might expect, soberly reviewed not only the immediate devastation but the continuing health casualties to those who were exposed to the ionizing radiation released at the time of the detonation...and their future offspring.
From Hiroshima we headed to Hong Kong. Again the logistics seemed overly complex. We were divided into 3 groups. Our group was bused to Fukuoka for an overnight there. The next day we flew to Hong Kong aboard another Malaysian Airliner by way of Kuala Lumpur. Again our route involved more than double the necessary air miles as we passed by Hong Kong on our way to Kuala Lumpur and then had to retrace a substantial portion of our route.
Hong Kong was a staging area for us as we prepared to cross into the Asian Third World. The official route began with a ferry trip across the Pearl River Estuary, followed by a bus ride to Wuzhou where the bicycling commenced. A group of 40 of us decided to begin our China experience in a different way. We booked a special week-long tour to Beijing, Xian, and Guilin to experience some places that we otherwise would have had to miss. We worked out an arrangement with the Odyssey staff to have them haul our our bicycles and heavy gear bags along the route while the 40 of us (with light luggage) flew to Beijing on Dragonair to begin our special tour. In each of the three areas we visited we were provided an English speaking tour guide. The guides were all young, and extremely accommodating (They practically lived with us).
We found Beijing to be a relatively modern city, kind of a show piece. It even has MacDonalds, Starbucks, etc. It is definitely not representative of China as a whole. The highlight of our visit there was the Great Wall, which was begun 2000 years ago during the Qin Dynasty (221-207 BC) when China was unified. Separate walls constructed by independent kingdoms were linked up, connecting a place near the east coast to the Gobi Desert, a length of over 5000 kilometers (more than 3000 miles).
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