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Contents Luxury Travel News Hotel/Restaurant News Calendar Odds N' Ends – David Spindler Interview Discovery – Sanxingdui |
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Dear Guy, From our founding, Imperial Tours' Monthly Group tours and FITs have challenged the notion that there are no sophisticated venues in China. Seven years later, it is widely accepted that China boasts some of the world's most avant-garde architecture, restaurants and contemporary art. Now, Imperial Tours is challenging the presumption that China provides few sophisticated venues outside the major cities of Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong. In our last two broadcasts, we publicized a new and incredible contemporary art park near Guilin. We dedicate this broadcast to re-gearing your expectations ofChengdu, the thrilling capital of Sichuan province. Home to one of China's most famous cooking traditions, this town's top restaurant is currently hosting Prince Charles' personal chef! With a history of thousands of years, Chengdu is home to much more than the famed Panda Research Institute. Sanxingdui is a nearby tourist site that in artistry and mystery surpasses the Terracotta Warriors. In addition to a review of Chengdu's wonderful restaurants and top hotels, this broadcast contains:
First, some luxury travel news: |
Virtuoso's China Onsite Traveling China…in style Phone us at 888 888 1970 |
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Luxury Travel News Imperial Tours is delighted to offer passengers on its Monthly Group tours and FITs the opportunity ofan exclusive, private visit to the turbine generator room and hi-tech control center at the Three Gorges Dam, the largest dam project in the world. This tour finishes with a walk along the top of the dam. Normally these areas are restricted, off-limits military areas, so Imperial Tours is thrilled to be able to offer this unique opportunity. Imperial Tours Announces Partnership With Viking River Cruises Customers on Imperial Tours' Monthly Group and FIT tours are now able to book Viking River Cruises' boats on the Yangzi River. Viking's superior facilities and cuisine have established it as the Yangzi River's leading cruise provider. Preparation for 2008 Olympics Affects Beijing's Tourist Sites Renovation of the temples on Longevity Hill at the Summer Palace is scheduled to soon finish. However scaffolding has gone up around the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests at the Temple of Heaven, where it will remain until May 2006. Similarly, many of the side corridors in the Forbidden City are covered in scaffolding and are off-limits. Booking the 2008 Beijing Olympics Many of you are wondering about hotel bookings and tours for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The situation is that the Beijing Olympic Committee is still finalizing plans to reserve up to 23,000 hotel rooms for the Olympics Games period. This will account for up to 80% of the city's total guestroom inventory for three-star and above hotels, giving it near monopoly control of bookings. Only when such arrangements are finalized can the remaining 20% capacity be allocated. Until that time, the best you can do is have your bookings placed on waiting lists that the better hotels are keeping. We will keep you abreast of further developments. China Becomes World's Fourth Most Popular Destination In 2004, China became the world's fourth most popular destination (42 million arrivals) after France (75.1 million arrivals), Spain and the United States. Italy fell to fifth position. Meanwhile, Hong Kong climbed in the rankings to become the seventh most visited destination in the world. Similarly, speaking at the 10th Annual Institute for Travel Writing and Photography, Arthur Frommer noted that China would rank first as Americans' most popular overseas destination this year. Imperial Tours runs Educational Tours in March and November each year. Please contact Margot Kong at 888 888 1970, to book your place on the Educational trip for March 2006, so that you can learn more about selling China. New Flight Routes
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Restaurant News May 2006 Culinary Tour We congratulate Jereme Leung, chef and owner of Shanghai's Whampoa Club on being described as a culinary "genius" by author Patricia Wells in the "International Herald Tribune" this May. Imperial Tours used Jereme's fabulous restaurant as soon as it opened last year, and is delighted to announce that Jereme will be demonstrating his skills on the Shanghai portion of Imperial Tours May 2006 Culinary Tour. Please click here for details. Chengdu Restaurant Review Gingko Restaurant has long been home to Sichuanese dining excellence in Chengdu. Their fashionable new restaurant on Renmin Street, designed by the company responsible for the interiors at Shanghai's Grand Hyatt (a Virtuoso property), really puts them on the map. Currently, Prince Charles' personal chef is the guest chef at the Western section of this restaurant, which also offers Japanese and Cantonese food. My Humble House is the brainchild of award-winning Singaporean restaurateur Andrew Tjoie. Although his Beijing restaurant is equally well known for its excellent cuisine, the ambiance of the Chengdu restaurant within a bamboo-lined park is more scenic. The cuisine at Han She is not typically Sichuanese. The menu, as exciting as the interior design, reaches out also to Hunanase, Cantonese and South-East Asian traditions. No visit to Chengdu is complete without indulging yourself to a Sichuanese Hot-pot. We would recommend Huangcheng Laoma Restaurant. Its wonderfully-designed restaurant offers a highly enjoyable experience. Additionally, this restaurant is sensitive to foreigners' palettes and can tone down the spiciness of its soups on request. Hotel News Peninsula Hotel, Beijing Opens Its Presidential Suite At last! The Peninsula Hotel in Beijing has finished a long series of renovations to its 6,000 square feet Presidential Suite. Most stunning is the false Chinese traditional roof that spans the entire length of the suite. Equally successful is the delightful fretwork of the wooden screens that accompany the baths in both bedrooms' ensuite bathrooms. The intricate mosaic in the smooth, marble floor is beautiful. These features accompany hi-tech features such as a short-wave radio center and an impressive array of entertainment and business equipment. New Luxury Hotels In China
Review of Chengdu's Five Star Hotels Chengdu's Kempinski Hotel makes up for a lacklustre lobby with the most modern and spacious bedrooms in the city (a standard room is 340 square feet large). While the design of some of the public areas could be improved, this hotel offers good service in the bedrooms, restaurants and at the front desk. Although the Kempinski is not situated in the very center of the downtown area, it is in a highly gentrified part of the city close to some of the city's best restaurants and bars. The glass-fronted lobby at the Chengdu Sheraton provides a bright entrance to the reassuringly calming tones of its well-designed lobby. Its bedrooms, which are now looking a little worn, are generally smaller (300 – 330 square feet) than those at the Kempinski and the bathrooms, though serviceable, feel a little tight. For example, they do not have a separate shower stall. The hotel is well-located in the center of the downtown area. |
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Beijing July 23: Real Madrid, the world's most expensive soccer team sporting stars of the caliber of David Beckham, Luis Figo, Zidane and Ronaldo amongst others play an exhibition match against Beijing Hyundai at the Worker's Stadium. Price; RMB 180, 380, 680, 1080, 1580, 3000, 5000 July 26: Manchester United, the world's most famous soccer club, brings its star-studded team to play Beijing Hyundai at the Worker's Stadium. Players such as Rooney, Giggs and Ronaldo will delight Chinese fans. Price: 80, 280, 480, 780, 1180. July 30 – 31: With the assistance of French Director, Daniel Mesguich and conductor Francois-Xavier Roth, the Chinese National Opera puts on a suitably surreal performance of Offenbach's "Les Contes De Hoffman" at the Poly Theater. Price: RMB 80, 180, 280, 380, 580, 680. August 2 – 7: Jungle Adventures, Disney's On Ice Show that combines tunes from The Jungle Book, The Lion King and Tarzan will be on at the Workers Gymnasium. Price: RMB 80, 180, 280, 360, 380, 500 August 12: leading Celtic instrumentalists, the Battlefield Band, dazzle Beijing audiences with their bagpipes and fiddles in a Scottish musical extravaganza at the Century Theater. Price: RMB 280, 380, 580, 880, 1280, 1680 August 20: The First IBA World Boxing Championship takes place in China at the Capital Gymasium, culminating with a Man's Heavyweight Championship bout. Sep 10 – 26: Marat Safin, Carlos Moya and Rafael Nadal will be amongst the competitors for the 2005 China Tennis Open takes place at Beijing's National Tennis Center. Price: Not yet available. October 2: Acclaimed Japanese conductor Seiji Ozawa leads the Japanese National Orchestra for a performance of "Il Barbiere Di Siviglia" at the Poly Plaza Theatrer. Price: RMB 180, 280, 380, 580, 880, 1280 Shanghai July 19 – 24: Jungle Adventures, Disney's On Ice Show that combines tunes from The Jungle Book, The Lion King and Tarzan will be on at the Workers Gymnasium. Price: RMB 100, 200, 280 July 22: Los Angeles Children's Chorus performs a wide variety of songs at Shanghai Concert Hall . Price: RMB 60, 80, 120, 160, 200 July 26: Bloc Business, the deep house Austrian band combining live music with dj-line, perform on the Shanghai Grand Stage. Price: RMB 80, 120, 160, 220. Sep 30 – Oct 1: "Ode to the Autumn Modern Dance Series III" collects contemporary Chinese dancers from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou in an exciting, avant-garde series at the Shanghai Oriental Art Centre. Price: RMB 80, 120, 260, 320, 380, 580 October 16: 2005 Shanghai Formula One Grand Prix takes place at the Shangahi International Circuit. Price: RMB 160, 330, 370, 450, 970, 1080, 1880, 2880, 3580, 3980. Please note that you must book as early as possible to be assured of getting hotel rooms in Shanghai over the Formula One Weekend. |
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Great Wall Specialist David Spindler has more achievements under his belt than most of us dare to dream of: he followed his Dartmouth College degree in Asian Studies with an M.A. in Han dynasty history (in Chinese) at Beijing University. After graduating from Harvard Law School, he joined the consulting firm McKinsey & Company in Beijing. Since leaving consulting in 2002, he has dedicated himself full-time to researching the history of the Great Wall of China. We caught up with him in Beijing. 1) How did you become interested in researching the Great Wall of China? I went on my first overnight hike on the wall in the fall of 1994: being in the outdoors, visiting remote places, getting away from a crowded city have always been attractive to me. Hiking on the Great Wall allowed me to do all of these things at once. Over the next six years, my wall hikes continued with increasing frequency until in the summer of 2000, I started work on a book about the history of the Great Wall in the Beijing area. 2)Surely this is a crowded area of academic interest. What do you aim to add to it? Actually, it is a surprisingly uncrowded field. I do not know of a single academic anywhere whose major field of interest is the Great Wall, leaving open the possibility that I may be able to make a real contribution to our understanding of the Great Wall. I hope to explain how Mongol action shaped and changed China's defenses against its northern neighbors through the use of border fortifications during the course of the Ming dynasty. 3) People think of the Great Wall as one continuous fortification stretching across the breadth of China. Is that right? The idea you mention is a common myth, both inside and outside China. First, the "one wall" issue. Many different dynasties built walls, in different places, and at different times during each dynasty. The result is a web of roughly parallel walls stretching across China's northern border, from points as far east as Pyongyang in Korea to as far west as the region of Xinjiang in northwestern China. Next, the "continuous wall" myth: none of these northern border walls, later collectively termed "the Great Wall," are, or ever were, continuous, unbroken structures from their origin to their terminus. They were only continuous in the places most susceptible to attack-flat areas, valleys, mountain passes. Outside of these areas, in more rugged, mountainous terrain, builders of border fortifications commonly built a series of signal towers with no wall connecting them. 4)How would you describe the Great Wall of China? I like to use three concepts when thinking about "the" Great Wall. The first, and most inclusive, I term the "Great Wall Line." This delineates the border that defenders were trying to prevent raiders from crossing. It may or may not have border wall or any other structure on it. The second, narrower concept is "Great Wall Structure," which I view as encompassing both walls and signal towers, whether or not there is continuous wall between them. The third concept refers to continuous walls termed "Border Walls" in places deemed likely to be raided. All three of these concepts are important in describing what I like to call a "Great Wall Defense Line." 5) In your opinion, did the Great Wall work or was it a waste of manpower, time and money? First, let's talk about what the Ming rulers were trying to do in defending their northern border and what resources they had at their disposal. After the 1420s, the Ming army no longer had the capability of going on campaigns far north of their territory to engage and defeat powerful Mongol groups. They were thus left to defend their border by deploying troops along it. In doing so, they needed to choose a border whose natural features like passes, ridges, and mountains made it most easily defendable. Once they had determined where they were going to defend against raiders, the Ming had to permanently station soldiers along the border to fight and send along signals of enemy movements. The Great Wall, with its towers and parapets, provided a way to house troops and serve as a permanent, fortified, line of defense. If one wants to consider the question of whether building and operating border fortifications was justified, one has to think of the Ming empire's alternatives, which were to pull back from its northern border or simply to defend people by enclosing them in small forts. Given the Ming dynasty goals of territorial control and protection of the livelihood of its population, there was really no alternative to a permanently fortified line of defense. Empires and nation-states tend to defend their territory at all costs, and the Ming is no exception. States throughout history have nearly always viewed a loss of territory as an unacceptably high cost. Your question also brings up another frequently mentioned, though I believe misguided line of inquiry about the Great Wall, by focusing on whether "it" worked. In fielding this question, I like to borrow a line from gun rights lobbyists in the United States: "Guns don't kill people, people do." I change that slogan around a bit to say, "Walls don't keep raiders out, people do." By that I mean Great Wall fortifications were simply a capital asset, that when used in conjunction with a well-informed, well-trained military, could be a significant deterrent to Mongol raids. 6)What types of sources do you use in your original research? Source materials about the Great Wall for the pre-Ming period are quite limited. The Ming dynasty is an entirely different story. The challenge for the researcher is that materials are scattered widely. The types of sources I find most helpful are official petitions and proposals (called memorials by Western sinologists), specialized Ming works on the Great Wall, and a day-by-day history of the Ming dynasty compiled after the reign of each Ming emperor called the Veritable Records of the Ming Dynasty. Some of these works have been photographically reprinted within the past fifty years and are available in libraries worldwide. Others have not been reprinted, and it is necessary to visit the library (and it may be just one!) that holds any extant copies of the work. To that end, I have visited libraries in China, Japan, and the U.S. as part of this project. 7)Your guided tours and lectures teach visitors how to view and understand different sections of the Great Wall. Which section of the Great Wall do people most enjoy? People frequently ask me what my "favorite" section of the Great Wall is. I don't have one-I simply like them all, though for different reasons. Where you should visit the Wall depends on how much time you have, your level of interest in seeing the sites of important Ming battles along it, your interest in hiking, and your level of aversion to seeing other people when you're there. I find that people who have the opportunity to learn about the history behind the Wall and why most of the popularly-held conceptions about it are false, and who make an informed choice based on the above factors thoroughly enjoy their visit. My own interest is in history, so I certainly prefer to take visitors to spots along the Wall where there were important raids and wall construction projects during Ming times. For the Beijing region, that usually means going northeast, where a major river valley provided attractive access for potential raiders to the city of Beijing. 8) As interesting as the Great Wall may be to some people, history can be pretty dry. What do you do to bring the Wall alive for your audiences? During my research, I pay particular attention to collecting interesting tidbits about vice, cruelty, corruption, and natural resource overuse along the Great Wall. I share these nuggets with visitors in the form of anecdotes, direct quotes from Ming officials about the Wall, and ballads composed by ordinary (and therefore illiterate) soldiers that reflect their own experiences on the Wall. David Spindler is available to accompany guests to the Great Wall on FIT itineraries. |
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Sanxingdui is a stunning archeological site close to Chengdu, the capital of China's westerly Sichuan province. The first artifacts to be discovered at Sanxingdui were 400 different colored jade pieces, dating as far back as the fifth millennium BCE, hence contemporaneous with the earliest Egyptian relics. These were serendipitously uncovered by farmer Yan Daocheng while he was out digging an irrigation ditch with his son in 1929. Authorities were quickly informed of this find, but excavations begun in the early 1930's were interrupted by China's civil war. It was not before 1986 that China, now under a Communist government, again had the academic stability and financial resources to fund a major archaeological dig. In light of known Chinese archeological evidence of the time, the results of these extensive digs, which unearthed two sacrificial burial pits, went well beyond the highest expectations of the most demanding of the gathered academics. Who could have dreamed of finding a six foot high cast bronze shaman figure dating back to the late Shang dynasty – over 3,000 years old (pictured left) – or a series of three foot by three foot cast bronze human heads covered in gold leaf? These have since become an emblem of Sanxingdui. Perhaps the most remarkable set of objects are a series of cast bronze "sacred trees" on which stand molded bronze singing birds! All these stand apart from the 100,000 earthenware pieces, and hundreds of bronze, jade and lacquer wares. Nor do they include the 400-piece gold scepter, jade tablets, jade dagger axes or various ivory objects, including over 60 elephant tusks. Compounding the archeological wealth of Sanxingdui is the silence of any historical record positioning this self-evidently, advanced civilization within the context of China's pre-history. The collision of archeology with history – of discovered artifacts of obvious cultural sophistication with a totally unexplained provenance- has wrapped the stunning Sanxingdui site and museum in a shroud of mystery. It is an enigma as perplexing, intriguing and compelling as that of the Egyptian pyramids. To view a Chinese national website showing photographs of Sanxingdui artifacts, please click here. Imperial Tours includes a visit to Sanxingdui in its FIT itineraries to Chengdu. |
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We hope you enjoyed this newsletter. As always, please do write back with any feedback that you would like us to incorporate. Alternatively, please call Margot Kong, our Director of Sales and Marketing, in San Francisco, at 888 888 1970. With Best Regards, To forward this newsletter to a friend, please click here. |
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