Monday, 4/13/09 on the Yangtze near Jingzhou

press the forward arrow for Chinese music

After a good night's rest, Arthur was OK, but he had given me quite a scare. We stay docked at Jingzhou until tonight. We had a safety briefing and a cruise briefing.

The Yangtze Gives Access to the Heart of China

It is market day in the heart of the Yangtze Valley. The cobblestone streets area awash with shoppers bargaining for fresh vegetables and bright ropes of yarn, for sesame seeds and for salt, for the noxious powder of the deer's antler and for the pig snout for tonight's soup pot. Two litter-bearers, clad in baggy Mao suits, shoulder a path through the crowds, quick-stepping their way through the noodle-makers and the dumpling bakers who work out in the open, cheek-by-jowl with the butchers and the sidewalk barbers. This is the China few people see. The Americans working their way through the crowded streets, pausing to inspect the unfamiliar vegetables and spices, to gawk at the pharmacist's supply of dried eagle skulls and pickled snakes, draw curious stares. "Foreigners" mutters one Chinese man as he brushes past. Visitors are a rarity here as most of the tourist boats that cruise the Yangtze pass without stopping. But here in Fengje, amidst what remains of the Ming Dynasty a city wall, and at other stops along the river, is one of China's most elusive travel experiences. Lured to the Yangtze by the smoky beauty of the Three Gorges, they have been carried by the river into the heart of rural China and find themselves, at last, in touch with its people.

The professional watchers, the old China hands, say the real life of China is in its villages. Most of the population, more than 800 million Chinese live outside the country's major cities. Many of China's "forbidden zones" are now open to visitors, but the major tour routes do not expose travelers too much of the countryside. The riverboats of the Yangtze put visitors in touch with the China many seek and few find, the backcountry China of Pearl Buck's novels and Mao Tse tung's Long March. China is still a land of peasants and theirs is a hardscrabble life that has little in common with the fashionable women seen on the streets of Shanghai or the well-spoken idealistic students of Beijing. Daily life in China's village is reduced to the lowest common denominators. Worries about famine and flood mark the boundaries of survival in much of central China. This year there is no panic in the countryside because the weather has been fine, the harvest good. Only a few people will starve this year, one guide tells the tour, his tone matter-of-fact. The autumn floods killed 3,000 people, but that's "not so bad as before," he said. The raging waters of the Yangtze drowned 34,000 Chinese in 1954, before dams and dynamite brought the river under some control.

Like the Mississippi River, which divides America into east and west, the Yangtze splits this huge country into north and south. The China north of the river is mostly grain country, the people farmers, its past military, its winters cold and snowy. Toward the south, the climate becomes steadily warmer and wetter, the lush green of rice paddies taking over where the golden fields of grain leave off and, near the border and the sea, the outside world begins to make its presence felt.

Scenic Passage

The milky brown waters of the Yangtze, heavy with silt it carries almost 4,000 miles from the Tibetan plateau to the China Sea, is a turbulent river, swift and sometimes dangerous. The 400-mile stretch between Yichang and Chongqing, the route of Yangtze cruise, is neither the wildest nor the swiftest but it surely is among the most beautiful. In the silvered light of the setting sun, the water turns to gold. The mountains are misty silver or smoky blue, each range like the jagged, back of a dragon.

The striking beauty is the backdrop for lives of brutal simplicity, for days of endless toil and meager comforts. The fields that terrace the slopes of the river are filled with Chinese, working early and late. The small plots of ground, rice paddies and potato patches and the like, are tended by dozens of farmers. In one field, a woman and a boy are hitched to the plow, mired to their knees in mud. Most of the work in rural China, in the fields and along the riverbanks, is done with sheer muscle power. The farmers who ferry heavy baskets of grain and potatoes down to the river to trade for the coal and sacks of soy flour they lug back up seldom waste a glance on the passing riverboat. The women washing clothes at the river's edge watch with curiosity but only the children wave.

Long stretches of the river are quiet, except for the bark of the riverboats' horns. The land sounds float out over the water, the sing of hammer on rock as workmen break boulders into gravel, the chanting of the farmers as they carry water to the fields and the cries of children calling to each other in the deepening dusk. From the decks of the riverboat, passenger can see people in the fields but cannot see what they are doing or why so many people are working such tiny patches of ground. On the walk in to the country just outside Shibaozhai, the group came upon a young woman harvesting rice. It was the second harvest and she had spent hours, gleaning the tiny rice paddy, working on her knees in the cold water. The grains of rice she salvaged would not have filled a tablespoon. Such effort would be wasted in a world of plenty. But China is a land with nothing to spare, its only abundance people. The press of the population is felt everywhere. Rural does not have the same meaning, the same proportions, in China as it has in America. A county seat in China may be a city of 50,000, serving a surrounding population of a million. Some of the river towns are huge, dark, teeming places with millions of residents. There is no sense of relief, of elbowroom, in the countryside where nature's green is seldom broken by color or even by light.

Electricity has not yet come to all of rural China and, as the ship moves through the foggy twilight, few lights appear on the slopes of the river. The country's hunger for power, for the energy to industrialize, may endanger the beauty of the Three Gorges. A huge new dam is being built on the Yangtze. The Three Gorges Dam will be the largest in the world and will diminish the drama of the gorges. The river will rise about 500 feet, submerging many historic towns and archaeological sites and forcing more than a million people to relocate. The captain of one of the ships traveling the Yangtze, who has spent his life on the river, who knows its rapids and is snares like a farmer knows his field, is resolute. "The river.., to wear a harness, yes. But tame.... never."

Then we had a demonstration of Chinese massage and Chinese traditional medicine. Nancy Ohlinger got a massage, and Nancy Pollen got a really vigorous neck massage. Arthur volunteered to be a guinea pig for an acupuncture demonstration.

Medicine's Latest Miracle

Acupuncture, which once seemed like wizardry to traditional medicine practitioners, is recognized word-wide for its ability to effectively treat a wide variety of disorders naturally and holistically---without the use of harmful drugs or invasive surgery, and with virtually no side effects.

Acupuncture stimulates the body's own healing abilities-your innate power to heal yourself.

Some 15 million Americans have tried acupuncture to relieve chronic pain and other ailments. In a culture that is overwhelmingly shy of needles, what could account for such popularity? Safety, for one thing. There is something to be said for a medical practice that's been around for 5000 years, with billions of satisfied patients. If acupuncture were dangerous, even its stodgiest critics concede, somebody would have noticed by now.

Because traditional Chinese Medicine is holistic, it treats the entire person---mental, physical, and emotional complaints can be addressed. Some disorders commonly treated by acupuncture include: headaches/ migraines, Premenstrual Syndrome (PMS), arthritis, Repetitive Stress Injury, asthma, sinusitis, common cold, immune system disorders, back pain, shoulder pain, knee pain, ear infection, fibromyalgia, ulcer, insomnia, depression, anxiety, anemia, addiction, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, neuralgia, incontinence, constipation, hypertension, and much more! In fact, the World Health Organizations has identified some 40 ailments that are successfully treated with acupuncture.

1. TAIYANG point: on the temples of the face; for common headaches.
2. ZUANZHU point: on the inner end of the eyebrows; for headache caused by eye strain.
3. BAIHUI point: at the midpoint of the line connecting the bilateral ear apex; for improve of blood circulation in the head.
4. FENGCHI point: on either side of the two muscles on the back of the neck at the base of the skull; for cold and sinus problems.
5. NEIGUAN point: two ?? above the wrist between the two tendons; for headaches and motion and seasickness.
6. YONGQUAN point: in the depression occurring on the anterior part of the sole of the feet; for senility and headaches.
   
   

Introduction of the Foot Reflection Zone

The vital organs of the human body have their own reflections in the human feet, which are arranged regularly. Put together side by side, the feet have an image which is like a sitting man. For example, the head is reflected in the big toes; the chest, including the lung and the heart, is reflected in the upper half of the soles; the shoulder, the elbow, and the knuckles are in the outer side of the feet from the top to the bottom; the abdomen, including the stomach, intestines, pancreas, liver (right -side), gall (right side), spleen (left side), and the kidney; the pelvic cavity, including the genetic organs (womb, ovary and prostate), bladder, urethra ('vagina) and anus; the spine is in the medial part which is along the arch of the foot Please refer to the Chart of the Foot Reflection Zones for details.

1. Adrenal Gland
Location: Located in the sole, about one fingerbreadth's wide below the 1St and 2nd metatarsal
Indications: arrhythmia, faint, asthma, arthritis, rheumatism and allergy.
Method: Press the point for 60 times with the knuckle of the index finger. Press until feeling sour and pain in the reflection zone.

2. Kidney
Location: Located in the sole, one fingerbreadth's width below the adrenal gland reflection zone.
Indications: acute and chronic nephritis, kidney stone, Lu-acmia, renal insufficiency, nephroptosis, edema, hypertension, arteriosclerosis, varicosity, rheumatic fever, arthritis, seminal emission and impotence.
Method: Massage from above to below for 60 times with the knuckle of the index finger. Press until feeling sour and pain in the reflection zone.

3. Urether
Location: Located in the sole, like a curve slantingly along the kidney reflection zone to a point under the navicular bone.
Indications: ureter stone, ureterjtis, rheumatism, arthritis, hypertension and arteriosclerosis.
Method: Massage horn above to below for 60 times with the knuckle of the index finger. Press until feeling sour and pain in the reflection zone.

4. Bladder
Location: Located in front of the internal nialleolus of the foci, urr1rr th: ravicular bone and beside the inner side of the abductor hallucis. -
Indications: ureter stone, cystitis, urethritis, retension, hypertension and arteriosclerosis.
Method: Press the point with the knuckle of the index finger for 60 times. Press until feeling sour and pain in the reflection zone. . .

5. Frontal Sinus
Location: Located on the top of the 10 The right side frontal sinus reflection zone is on the left foot while the left side is on the- right foot.
Indications: nasosinusitis, headache, dizziness, heaviness of the head, insomnia, fever, apoplexy, cerebral concussion and diseases of the eyes, nose and mouth.
Method: Massage the big toe from the outer part to the inside part, and massage the other toes from above to below for 60 times. Press until feeling sour arid pain in the reflection zone.