9. Open Our Door and Reach Out to the World

Whoa! This is going to be my first post from China. We traveled to the City of GuangZhou (aka, Canton) via train from Hong Kong on Monday 10/23/06, stayed that night in an airport hotel, and then joined our tour group from the US on Tuesday morning 10/23/06. We spent the day touring around GuangZhou and later, on an evening flight, reached Zhangjiajie in Hunan a little after 9pm. Since I didn't bring my laptop, it was not clear if I can blog on this trip. As it turned out, the hotel that we stayed in (does offer an internet-connected computer for only $10 RMB (~$1.25 US dollars per hour)! So here I am. I can't upload photos yet but may be able to do that tomorrow.

First, what does the title of this blog mean? According to our knowledgeable tour guide, the Chinese words for the city of Zhangjiajie, 张家界, were purposely selected by city elders in 1994 and it was quite a story. Zhangjiajie stands for 3 Chinese words: Zhang (张) which usually represents the Chinese surname 'Zhang' but the word also means 'open' as in 'zhangkai' (张开). 'Jia' (家) is the word that means 'home', but together with the word 'men' formed the phrase, 'jiaman' (家门), which means 'door'. The word 'Jie' (界) is half of the phrase 'Si Jie' (世界), meaning 'the world'. So taken together, the three words Zhangjiajie really were intended to mean the wishes of the local people to open their doors to the entire world, letting their natural scenery be enjoyed by everyone. This is really quite a long-sighted view. No wonder, the Zhangjiajie area has been selected by the UN as a World Natural Heritage Site. It has also been the shooting location of several Chinese movies, one example is the 2002 French-Chinese movie: Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress (小裁缝).

The scenery we saw today were just like those misty mountains one would see in a Chinese watercolors painting. There is a waterfall that spewed out from the midst of rock formations, just like from the scene in the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark. The entire area is dotted with soaring peaks with spotted fine needle pine trees. The mountain lake is large and pure, as it was raining when we were sailing on it; this would have been a scene from our imagination. But too many tourist are there already, including us! But the natural beauty has not been spoiled.

I hope I can post some photos later.


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